In a Form 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), F5 Networks disclosed today that it will be leasing approximately 137,201 square feet of office space in a new building located next to the three that currently serve as the company’s corporate headquarters.
F5 intends to occupy the new building by the second fiscal quarter of 2008, after construction has been completed.
Categories: F5 Networks
British IT publication TechWorld published some comments from representatives of seven leading WAN-optimization vendors that participated in a recent TechWorld-sponsored panel.
Most of the vendors agreed that wide-area file access (WAFS) is being subsumed under the broader umbrella of WAN optimization. Microsoft and its proprietary file protocols were blamed for causing significant trouble, with representatives from Converged Access and Cisco calling out the Redmond giant.
Said Manickam Sridhar, CTO of Converged Access:
The trend over the next 18 months is that Microsoft has to wake up, because 90 percent of the problem is Microsoft protocols. When they solve that, you’re left with how do you solve the one-to-many problem, and how do you solve Microsoft driving gigabytes of data across the network.
Jay Mellman, director of marketing for Cisco’s application networking group, expounded on the same theme:
When you consolidate, you have to fix the problems of people getting access, and those problems are exacerbated by Microsoft protocols which were never designed to be used like that.
Not surprisingly, WAN-optimization vendors see the technology spreading further, with some, such as F5 Networks, seeing specialized client software running on notebook PCs. The vendors also warned that while application performance might improve, it could come at the cost of increasingly complex networks that will be more difficult to manage.
Categories: Cisco · F5 Networks · Microsoft · network infrastructure
In the aftermath of email-security vendor IronPort’s acquisition of encryption specialist PostX, I’ve received reports that the company will take some time to digest its new property before pushing ahead with an IPO.
If the markets remain relatively receptive, an IronPort IPO could occur early in February or the spring months of 2007.
Categories: IPOs · Internet Security
Mitel chairman and billionaire technology entrepreneur Terry Matthews indicated yesterday that a prospective $150-million IPO of Mitel is more likely now that market sentiment appears to be taking a turn for the better.
Said Matthews in connection with a possible IPO by his IP PBX and VoIP-systems company:
The reason for the delay has been clearly stated. All you have to do is look at May/June of this year and 50, 60, 70 IPO attempts were pulled. And not only that, about the same number did go IPO and they ended up with the price dropping after they went public . . . .
. . . .until there’s a change in the sentiment, and it may be starting now. Certainly the technology stocks are beginning to do a little better."
Matthews also said Canadian technology companies — of which he has launched more than a few — need to work hard, be persistent, and pursue partnerships to gain entry into foreign markets if they are to avoid being acquired and becoming "branch plants."
In the wake of a stock-option backdating scandal that brought about the resignation of its chairman and CEO, as well as its president and chief operating officer, encryption vendor SafeNet will make presentations at two investor conferences next week.
Walter Straub, the company’s chairman and interim CEO, is scheduled to provide an overview of the company’s performance and prospects at AeA Classic Financial Conference on Monday, November 6, and at the Pacific Growth Equities Technology Conference on Thursday, November 9.
Even though analysts at Deutsche Bank Securities and Stifel Nicolaus recently upped estimates and elevated SafeNet to a "buy" recommendation, respectively, the company still has some work to do to establish that it is back on course after the stock-option backdating issue and the executive-suite overhaul.
Categories: Internet Security · Litigation
At any given time, Cisco Systems is actively considering a number of possible acquisitions, so it’s no wonder that the market invariably is awash in rumors about which company Cisco will buy next.
Currently, there are several rumors making the rounds about companies Cisco allegedly is on the verge of buying.
One persistent rumor is that Cisco is considering a purchase of McAfee, but that seems extremely improbable. Cisco likely has no interest in entering the low-margin antivirus marketplace, and too many of McAfee’s other products either don’t mesh well with Cisco’s strategic objectives or overlap with already successful products Cisco sells today. Besides, Cisco is closer with Trend Micro than with McAfee, so it probably would acquire Trend if it really felt the need to bolster its content-security capabilities.
If McAfee is to be acquired, I believe private-equity interests will be the buyer. Such talks are said to have taken place.
Cisco also is said to be interested in Vontu, an early leader in data-loss prevention (DLP) solutions. I believe Cisco and Vontu have spoken on at least a couple occasions, and I know that Cisco thoroughly reviewed the DLP market several months ago.
My understanding is that Cisco has decided that, while the DLP market is interesting and Vontu appears to have excellent solutions and a leading position in the market, the market segment itself is not ideally suited to Cisco’s core competencies. It’s not an area where Cisco feels it will have a natural advantage over others likely to enter the space.
I still believe that Symantec will acquire Vontu, though the latter could also be snapped up at some point by HP, IBM, or even Microsoft.
Another company reputed to be in Cisco’s acquisitive sights is WAN-optimization market leader Riverbed Technology. Cisco already has WAN-optimization products, derived partly from its acquisition of FineGround Networks Inc., a company that focuses on Web-based applications acceleration and optimization, for approximately $70 million in May of this year.
Cisco is competing against Riverbed with its WAAS (Wide Area Application Services), an offering that combines WAN optimization, application acceleration and WAFS (wide-area file services) in a single product. WAAS is software that can run in network modules for Cisco’s 2800, 3700 and 3800 ISRs (Integrated Services Routers) or in three Cisco appliances.
Riverbed has made its product offerings more scalable, enabling it to compete with Cisco for large enterprise accounts that might be influenced by previous investments in Cisco network infrastructure. As Riverbed’s recent quarterly results attest, the company is doing extremely well.
My view is that Cisco is not ready to throw in the towel on its own WAN-optimization efforts just yet, but it is possible Cisco might revisit the subject if Riverbed extends its market lead further.
Categories: Cisco · Hewlett Packard · Internet Security · M&A · McAfee · network infrastructure
Database and enterprise-software giant Oracle Corporation continues to acquire companies at a feverish pace.
Oracle announced this morning that it has acquired SPL WorldGroup, a provider of revenue and operations-management software for the utilities industry and tax-management software for government organizations.
Said Charles Phillips, Oracle’s president:
With the addition of SPL, Oracle plans to delivers the first end-to-end packaged revenue and operations management solution for investor-owned and public sector utilities. Conventional, customized solutions have proven inefficient, inflexible and costly. Oracle is putting utilities in control to enable greater business insight, increased service profitability and customer loyalty. In addition, SPL’s tax management solution solves the revenue management needs of public sector enterprises.
According to an Oracle press release, SPL management and employees will form a dedicated global utilities business unit within Oracle, focused on utilities industry-specific solutions, and will continue to support the development of tax-management software for the public sector.
