Security startup Consentry Networks and Alcatel-Lucent on Monday announced an OEM agreement in which Alcatel-Lucent will weave Consentry's secure switch technology into its OmniAcess line of WLAN products.
This is the first OEM deal for Consentry, which has quickly built a customer base around its LANShield controller and switch-based network access control offering. The deal underscores the desire of many enterprises to consolidate switching and network access control functions into a single piece of hardware, said Tom Barsi, CEO of ConSentry, Milpitas, Calif.
"This is a validation of our approach and original vision of delivering first secure LAN switch," Barsi said.
When it comes to NAC, companies have been engaging in a great deal of tire kicking as they try to separate point products from integrated solutions, according to Barsi. "What companies are looking for is both pre-connect and post admission security capability," he said.
Consentry's channel partners expect the exposure ConSentry will get as a result of the deal to translate into healthier sales.
"People tend to be followers in this business, and if more people are getting exposed to Consentry through this deal, then it's good for the channel," said Doug Marlin, managing partner at Independent Technology Group (ITG), a solution provider and Consentry partner in Oak Park, Calif.
Jeff Brown, director of business development at Network System Architects Corp., a solution provider in Stoughton, Mass., said large infrastructure players are recognizing that they need to move beyond just selling ports and switches and into offering services on top of that infrastructure.
"Any message that gets out as a result of the alliance will trickle down to the channel and integration players, who are generally responsible for executing authentication and access control and NAC-esque functionality," he said.
As enterprises increasingly look to third parties to solve security problems, there's a real opportunity to deliver overall solutions that handle everything from switching to LAN access control and perimeter security, Barsi said. "We see a whole ecosystem evolving around LAN security," he said.
Consentry will achieve valuable visibility by allying with additional infrastructure vendors that don't have things like identity and user access control built in, Brown said.
|
Symantec's Code Red: The Law Enforcement/Anonymous E-Mail Exchange Law enforcement officials negotiated via e-mail for more than two weeks with an Anonymous group member trying to extort $50,000 from Symantec to keep stolen product code off the Internet. |
|
How To Sell IT Security Services To Your Customers Cyberattacks can cost a business thousands, even millions, of dollars, and can deal a death blow to some. Here's how IT solution providers can help guard against malicious attacks. |
|
Cybersecurity Experts: What They Know Could Scare You A recent report based on interviews with security experts in government, business and academia finds more than half in agreement that a worldwide arms race is taking place in cyberspace. |
 More
Slide Shows |
- ConSentry Takes Embedded Approach To LAN Security
- ConSentry Fortifies NAC Offering
- Google Wallet Security Questioned
- Microsoft Shows Its Love In Valentine's Day Patch Release
- The Daily App: KyWiki for iPad
- The Daily App: Scan To PDF Free For Android
- Alcatel-Lucent Names New Enterprise President
- Five Companies That Dropped The Ball This Week
- Insider Threats: The Next Frontier for Security Resellers and SMBs
- Complete Security and Your Bottom Line: Sophos, Value and the Channel
- Tough Threats, Tougher Security: How You Can Leverage New Solutions To Combat A “Targeted Attack” Landscape
- Dark Clouds Ahead: Why the Mid-Market Needs To Ramp Up Cloud Security and How You Can Help Them Get There
