Another day, another flavor of NAC from Cisco.
Network World’s Tim Greene was among those reporting on this latest variant of Cisco NAC – this time oneNAC that aims to combine aspects of the Cisco NAC Appliance and the Cisco NAC Framework. And it'll be ready in just 12 or 18 short months from now.
I love these announcements. They highlight everything that Cisco wants to be while making it painfully clear all the places they’re falling short. It also helps invite customers, media, and analysts to ask how we compare to Cisco. We love to do that – especially in the form of competitive bake-offs – because anyone who looks at the issues quickly grasps the disparity between what Cisco wants to do and what they can do. And between what Cisco and ConSentry can do.
My favorite version of the comparison question is “How can you sell security infrastructure, especially switches, given Cisco’s dominance in the switch market?”
Through my many years of competing with Cisco – in service provider core routing, wireless, WAN optimization, and now LAN security – I’ve seen a wide range of Cisco customers. Here at ConSentry, it’s really crystallized for me that Cisco customers fall into four camps.
Type 1
The true-blue believer. These customers build their networks according to Cisco blueprints and don’t diverge from that path. Luckily, ConSentry inside sales reps can quickly qualify out these prospects so we don’t end up spending time with them.
Type 2
Wedded to Cisco for switching infrastructure but will consider other vendors for appliances or other services when Cisco falls short. At Peribit, selling WAN optimization and application acceleration, I saw plenty of these, and we sell plenty of ConSentry Controllers – our appliance form factor – to these guys now.
Type 3
Wedded to Cisco for switching infrastructure at headquarters but open to other infrastructure vendors for regional or branch offices. These customers sometimes surprise you – we’ve had more than one customer tell us they’d never consider our LANShield Switch, and they happily deploy our LANShield Controller in headquarters. Then some months or even a year later, as they’re approaching a switch upgrade project in their regional locations or branch offices, they come back asking “Now what does that switch look like again? And it’s cheaper than the dumb switch I was going to buy from Cisco?” These guys represent a fantastic opportunity for both our LANShield Switch and LANShield Controller.
Type 4
Won’t waver from Cisco chassis switches in the core but consider the LAN edge to be commoditized. These customers are the most fun because they think the biggest right out of the gate – they immediately see the value of the ConSentry secure switch in lieu of something like a 3750. They love the ability to deploy identity-based control, and they see the need for it right at the LAN edge. We’ve had several customers who sought us out originally for our appliance end up accelerating their switch upgrade projects by as much as nine months to get all the security built in for free and spend less than the budgetary planning amount set aside to upgrade with Cisco
For companies like ConSentry, all the fits and starts coming out of Cisco around NAC and the self-defending LAN serve us incredibly well. The announcements serve to validate all the functionality needed but dramatically call attention to the current shortcomings of the Cisco solution. So let me say once again – thanks Cisco for making our jobs easier!
--Michelle McLean
mmclean-at-consentry-dot-com
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