The Ashimmy Blog: Sometimes there is more to appliances than software

September 30, 2008

Sometimes there is more to appliances than software

I have had my share of blog wars with Richard Stiennon. I try to go easy on him now, so as to stay out of it. But, once again Richard shows that sometimes he just doesn't get it. His latest flub comes in a post on Nokia exiting the security appliance business.

Richard says in essence "good riddance". He says Nokia was lucky to capitalize on Check Points failure to come to market with an appliance. But they missed the boat by never developing their own solutions and moving into UTM (isn't UTM the answer to everything for Richard?) and other security technologies. Richard says they should have sold 5 years ago and now of course will have to take a bargain basement price.

Richard you are wrong because you don't understand Nokia's value. They never claimed to develop great software. They developed a great hardware platform. Yes Nokia is a giant telecommunications company and the appliance business was never really more than a small rounding error on the bottom line I guess. But the division that ran the appliance business did a good job.

I have met with and spoken to engineers and sales people who worked for Nokia. They were able to clearly articulate their value prop and never tried to hide the fact that they ran best of breed software on the appliance. The Nokia boxes were quality appliances. In a market where far too many appliances are Dell boxes with a different color bezel, the Nolia appliance was a more than just a white box. Over the last few years they branched out beyond Checkpoint and ran several other applications on the appliance. All in all, Nokia had a good product and a good channel. I wish they would sell StillSecure on a Nokia box.

Also, for a good explanation check out the comments to Richard's post by Gray haired security Wonk. If you think you know who it is, mail me.