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Stiennon sends a love note to Check Point
Not sure if the word is out, but Richard Stiennon will be taking on my former columnist slot at NetworkWorld. Good luck with that Richard. Hopefully you can learn from the line I drew in the sand. I believe his first column appears on Monday.
But just as I went out swinging, Richard is coming in swinging. Richard sends Gil Shwed of Check Point a little love note here. Something tells me Gil just took Richard off his Hanukkah card list. But Richard makes a number of good points about what Check Point should be doing next. I won't rehash the entire letter here, but put my spin on a few points that Richard makes.
- Check Point needs to ship a hardware appliance - First of all, Sofaware doesn't count. I agree with this and believe given the need for Check Point to fortify their enterprise and service provider position, they should buy Crossbeam. And they should do it today. If someone like Lucent/Alcatel, Motorola, Ericcsson or Siemens takes them out you'll be sorry Gil. You really will because Richard is right, the service providers are itching to build in-the-cloud security services and Crossbeam can help get you there. And yes, Nokia will be pissed, but where else are they going to go? There is minimal risk there.
- Check Point should focus on the network - This I disagree with. Given that I believe "big is the new small" I don't see how it's defendable over any length of time to not play on the servers or on the end points. Customer want more integrated solutions to help with the mind-numbing complexity they have to deal with, not just networking stuff. Check Point already does the endpoints OK (with the zone stuff), but now they should buy a database security player (maybe like Imperva and bring Shlomo back home) to gain exposure to that segment.
- Reset expectations on margins - This is an astute observation from Richard. Check Point's unbelievable, Microsoft-ian margins is not doing them any favors. It's set unrealistic expectations for Wall Street that they need to leave behind. Buying a box player is one way to do it and making it more attractive to sell for the channel is another. And Check Point has such margin cushions, they could add another 5 points for the channel and not even breath heavy. Juniper, not so much.
There is one other thing I'll add to Richard's suggestions. Take a long hard look at WAN and web site optimization. I'm a big fan of focus and believe there are lots of security things you can (and should) focus on, but Citrix is right. The perimeter is consolidating around secure accelerated access. Application and network acceleration is a perfect complement to the stuff you already sell to customers. If you don't want to mess around in the data center, dig deeper into the perimeter and what's selling in the perimeter is application and network acceleration.
But as with Richard, feel free to take my feedback with a grain of salt. And I have no doubt that you will. You can milk your existing installed base for years to come, maintain your crazy margins and just exist. But what fun is that? It's about winning and right now, you ain't. So get out the checkbook and get moving, time is a wasting...
DISCLOSURE: I am a very very very limited partner in a venture capital fund that has invested in Crossbeam. I have no involvement in the management of the fund or any of its portfolio companies.
"Richard Stiennon will be taking on my former columnist slot at NetworkWorld. "
Change that line to:
"Richard Stiennon will be taking on my former communist slot at NetworkWorld. "
Michael
One keeps seeing this more often from vendors that have suites/multiple packages - "Customer want more integrated solutions to help with the mind-numbing complexity they have to deal with".... outside of the grand assumption that this is better, what statistics exist to indicate this is a better way? What range are the savings? 5%, 10%, 25%, 50%, etc...
As with everything else, the value you get from implementing integrated solutions depends on what you are trying to do and what you are doing now. Some folks can achieve very significant time and money savings, even on the order of 50% or so. Some folks have their process down to a science and can implement and change things in their sleep, so their savings would be less.
There are similarities and in most environments that I've seen, there is a significant amount of savings by integrating solutions. But that doesn't mean that would apply to yours.