CRN Interview: Network Associates's Gene Hodges

After several tumultuous years and a binge of acquisitions, Network Associates is on the comeback trail. In an interview with Editor in Chief Michael Vizard, company president Gene Hodges outlines his overall channel strategy and pledges to be a pioneer in the creation of Intrusion-protection technologies.

CRN: How many acquisitions has Network Associates made lately?

HODGES: We've acquired four companies that are germane to our partners. The most important were two companies that have intrusion-prevention product lines. These were startups with pretty solid products, and we can leverage them and sell them immediately. One was a company called Entercept Technologies, which produced host intrusion-prevention capabilities. That's going to be a pretty natural add-on over time to the antivirus space. The other company was called IntruVert Networks, and it's an intrusion-prevention technology that works on the network,so it's a pretty natural extension to what people are doing with firewalls or network intrusion-detection systems.

CRN: What makes these offerings unique?

HODGES: The uniqueness is these are prevention products. They actually block an attack in realtime, so this is pretty new technology. Existing detection products see something that looks like a bad guy and they generate an alert. Our products actually block the attack. With the Entercept Technologies software, you can stop attacks and you don't have to patch your system. You don't have to put an update on it like with an antivirus product. That's pretty unique in the industry. I think the question for customers is, 'Why would you spend money on just detecting if you can actually stop the attack?' It's a lot more satisfying to be able to say, 'I stopped a break-in,' rather than to say, 'I set off a burglar alarm.' Our perspective is that many of the most dangerous threats are beyond the point where a reaction system can cope with it. These new technologies look for strange behavior and are able to stop a threat that you didn't know was in play.

CRN: What were the other two acquisitions?

HODGES: The third acquisition is an antispam technology. We've released products for the small-business environment and this quarter for the big-business environment. The fourth product is just coming out this quarter, and it's in our Sniffer product line. Sniffer is a premium network analysis tool, but the downside is it's expensive. We're releasing a new software-only product this quarter called Netasyst, which is aimed directly [at] our partners [and] is a low-cost software solution that will let them sell to smaller companies effectively and to branch offices of big companies.

CRN: Given the financial history surrounding Network Associates, how is the company fundamentally changed today?

HODGES: This management team wants to work [with] channel partners who are aggressively doing business with us. This is an honest group of guys. We certainly don't commit that you're going to like us, but we commit that we will be honest and we'll keep our word. So I guess I'm saying I'm about ready to quit apologizing. We've kept our promises, and I think the dialogue that's appropriate has been along the lines of 'What are we getting done for you?' and 'What are we not getting done for you?', just like you would have with any other vendor.

CRN: Is Network Associates then more focused on the channel today than say a few years ago?

HODGES: We very definitely are. The intrusion-prevention products are products in an early technology stage. There's five years of opportunity in this product. We need people who have security contacts in place, who have service capability. These aren't products for kids. They require some pretty sophisticated management setup. That led to the decision to make them pure channel products from the very beginning. We're increasing our spending most aggressively in terms of marketing. %85 Our second most aggressive spending area is going to be infrastructure streamlining for partner management systems. %85 Then the third major area of investment is for training and evaluation products for our partners.