Vendors Provide Multiple Lines Of Defense
To be sure, folks are still buying and selling point products in isolation, but the products are much more likely to be combined with a variety of other defensive technologies. This is a key factor to partners who want no part of point products unless they're truly unique, both in terms of profitability and innovation.
"The only point products we pick up are the ones we can make good gross margins on," says Ken Batorski, president of Woods Network Systems in Farmington, Conn.
Today's multipronged attacks require multiple lines of coordinated defense, including e-mail filters, Web proxies, host-based software firewalls, distributed antivirus tools, management platforms and more.
Of the product collections in this year's survey, Computer Associates' eTrust line took first place for the support and partnership subcategories, but ultimately shared a tie for first place after its third-place and second-place scores for loyalty and product innovation were factored in. In particular, CA ranked a consistent second in all criteria comprising product innovation, swept the support subcategory's criteria, and scored first for all but one criterion in the partnership subcategory. That is a remarkable jump from the 2003 ARC survey, which showed CA in the bottom half of the field. CA now clearly dominates the competition in this area.
Rounding out the top spot for overall winner, Cisco came in second in both partnership and support, and showed a respectable third in the area of overall product quality. While Cisco fell behind CA on raw numbers, a strong 80 for loyalty gave it a boost, thereby sharing a category victory with CA.
Trend Micro swept the product innovation subcategory, winning the highest rankings for richness of features, product quality/reliability, technical innovation and compatibility, and ease of integration. While Trend Micro had the second-highest loyalty score, 71, its weighted score didn't change enough to move it out of third place. This was the first year for Trend Micro's participation in this category. Its strong debut is an excellent indicator of its potential.
The three remaining vendors that participated last year--Symantec, Network Associates and Check Point--all shifted downward this year, coming in fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively.