Functionality Forgoing Forklifts
My favorite techno-contrarian Nick Carr has a post linking to an article he just had published in Director magazine. It contains 10 common-sense approaches to reducing IT costs. Many of his points are good but in particular I want to confirm a growing trend he calls out: customers’ general distaste for significant infrastructure migrations. More and more, companies want to take advantage of what they already have. He writes:
Since then [2001] exciting new technologies have also emerged that have allowed businesses to use their existing IT equipment more effectively and avoid buying new gear. Suddenly, companies are finding they can cut their IT budgets and still have the computing capabilities they need. Smart IT management is all about getting more for less.
As I talk to customers about identity management for networks many of them approach it assuming that a new overlay network is not an acceptable solution. They are looking for a layer of intelligence to let them take advantage of what they already have in place, even if their LAN infrastructure is a few years old. I expect this trend to result in more challenges for the nascent inline LAN security market beyond Caymas’ closure. I’ve been maintaining for a while that we’ve got most of the core packet processing capabilities that we need, now it’s all about intelligent management of our existing investment.
Technorati Tags: Identity Management, security