Where do you go when the music stops?

My friend Michelle McLean returns from her blogging exile today with a new article. I was wondering where she was. Welcome back Michelle! Anyway, Michelle is seeking to ride the coattails of Rothman and Stiennon about security being baked into the infrastructure.  While overall Michelle makes some good points, I have two issues with what she is saying (you didn't expect me to agree with her did you?  Even if Rothman does say I am back on the Ritalin):

1. There is a big difference between NAC and what Richards view of secure network fabric is.  Michelle know matter how much you may want to play down the pre-connect check aspect of NAC, it is important and customers demand it.  Richard on the other hand is not a big fan of that and NAC for that matter at all.

2. As to Rothman's reference to the musical chairs game, I think you are right on that eventually the security overlay model will be caught when the music stops.  However, when customers go to upgrade to a "twofer" switch do they buy it from the security company or do they get it baked into the switch from the company their network guy is already dealing with. 

This is not a trivial point either folks.  NAC is bought and paid for by the network guy, not the security guy.  He is more comfortable buying from a Cisco, HP ProCurve, Extreme, Foundry, etc., then he is from a "security" company.  This is exactly why we have pursued an OEM/partnership strategy in NAC with some large switch vendors and I suspect is what is behind the ConSentry/Alcatel deal as well as other NAC/switch vendor deals.