Pat Clawson can bluff all he wants, but to IPO he is going to have show his cards

Not sure if this article in Dark Reading by Kelly Jackson Higgins is some sort of joke or if Pat Clawson thinks the security business is a big Texas Hold'em tournament. But it could get real embarrassing if someone calls him and he has to show his cards. It seems the spark for this story is the long rumored name change of the former Patchlink Security to Lumension Security.  They have been threatening to change their name for months, if not years now and have finally gone and done it.  They really had no choice.  It really gave their sales team a lack of creditability when they would try to sell the fact that they were not a patch company with a name like Patchlink. Of course the fact that Big Fix says they are secure configuration management drove the Patchlink guys crazy, as they didn't want Big Fix to be anything Patchlink wasn't.  Where they came up with a name like Lumension though is anyone's guess.  I have two - One they ran a new name contest and someone's 13 year old daughter came up with it. Two, they paid a small fortune to one of those boutique naming shops to come up with that one.  I don't know but it sounds like last years new Chevy model to me.

Anyway, Pat Clawson takes the opportunity to spin a yarn that Kelly dutifully reports (come on Kelly, how about some more up close and personal features like this one on Thomas Ptacek).  Clawson tells us that the reason for the name change is the company is "retrenching" for an IPO in mid-2008.  Retrenching?  As if we don't know that an IPO would mean cool hand Pat would have to file an S-1 that would show us all what he is really holding.  I suspect that when those cards see the cold, hard light of day, Lumina-Patchlink would not exactly be a Wall Street darling as an IPO candidate.  A reverse merger-pink sheet candidate maybe, but getting a top bank to underwrite this one would be like trying to get a sub-prime mortgage with no money down right now.  In any event, my bet is Pat is way to cagey a poker player to ever let anyone have a peek at the numbers behind him here.

Next Pat tells us that with his two acquisitions he has now risen above the likes of Big Fix and Shavlik and is more like McAfee and CA. He throws in all of the good buzz words, "cloud", "agentless", "SaaS", etc. and we are supposed to take it all in. While he is at it, he claims to also have policy compliance and NAC too.  Pat has it all, or so says he.  You can almost see Nick Selby of 451 choking down the laughs in his quote in the article when he calls Pats claims "an overstatement".

I am starting a little tournament of my own. I am taking odds that patchlink or whatever they are called never IPO's in its present state and will instead be shopped hard.  Anyone want to take any action on that one?