Another One Bites the Dust

Secure Computing completes its acquisition of CyberGuard. Read the release.

This is all about consolidation of market share. Secure gains both in the firewall/VPN and web filtering markets. Secure also gets a bit more activity on low end.

It really doesn't make sense to support two lines of either firewalls or web filtering over time. Expect Secure to move to migrate Cyberguard customers to their platforms sooner rather than later. Don't believe the kubaya press release jargon, "we're going to take the best of both product lines and integrate." Blah blah blah. Economically, it doesn't make sense. Why force ALL of the customers to migrate when only half of them would need to? Pick a platform, communicate that to customers with a strong (and economically attractive) migration plan and move on.

For Cyberguard customers, this is a good opportunity to revisit your perimeter strategy since you are likely going to need to move platforms anyway. Call your rep (or VAR) and demand to understand the roadmap and how much investment your product is going to receive moving forward. If they can't give you a definitive answer within 30 days, get very worried. At a minimum, bring a couple of vendors in to see if you can squeeze Secure on the maintenance renewal.

There is also going to be some consolidation of VARs, so Cyberguard VARs will need to figure out if they want to add Secure to the mix or not. 

It also wouldn't be surprising to see some of the companies on the low-end (you listening Sonicwall and Watchguard?) aggressively courting Cyberguard customers, since uncertainty around M&A is the best breeding ground for vendor swap-outs.