It was a mistake Densil - checked it out with Datastream


ains


Fear of a Blue Coat?
February 3, 2003
By Christopher Saunders


One of the biggest players in network security is now angling to make a name for itself in the instant messaging market -- a move that will have dramatic implications for the number of players now making headway in the market.

Blue Coat Systems (Quote, Company Info), formerly known as CacheFlow, is a provider of proxy appliances to major corporations. Its products provide for filtering Web content, scanning for viruses, caching, and managing bandwidth.

Beginning in spring, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Blue Coat will be adding instant messaging security to that list. Because its products use content monitoring to police open firewall ports, including IM in the mix is something of a cinch, offsetting the ability of most public IM clients to use a number of ports to connect to public networks.

"IM clients are port-agile applications -- say, you close port 5190 and these applications know how to roll over and look for new ports," said Charles Dauber, vice president of marketing at Blue Coat. "It takes sophisticated knowledge of Web security devices to manage that."

As a result, Blue Coat's IM Traffic Control, like most offerings now on the market, can lock down on IM traffic from most clients, including those using the large public networks and other popular systems, like Jabber. Blue Coat also can apply instant messaging use policies on a group and individual user level, and based on a number of criteria, including time-of-day. It provides logging capabilities, and can enact keywords-based restrictions on the fly -- providing for uses like blocking taboo words before they are transmitted during conversations.

Blue Coat's offering also links to corporate directories -- like LDAP, Active Directory, and Radius -- to determine user privileges.

What makes the offering unique, however, is that it is only available on its own, dedicated hardware. As opposed to most IM security applications, which run on common server operating systems and hardware, Blue Coat's security products work the same way as do most business-class firewalls and routers: running on their own, specialized machines, under a custom OS.

"It's not based NT or Linux, so you've got none of the issues like patching that you have general-purpose OSes," Dauber said. "That's why our Web security applications are so heavily employed by enterprise customers -- they understand a drop-in appliance with security and control, versus a software platform."

As routers and firewalls shifted from software to dedicated appliances, "we think the same thing will happen with Web security, and IM is a part of that," he added.

Additional Threats from the Newcomer

A number of other factors exist in addition to Blue Coat's unique selling point that could spell trouble for the IM security vendors now on the market.

For one thing, Blue Coat plans to aggressively sell its current customer base on IM Traffic Control. Considering that the firm has shipped upwards of 13,000 appliances to more than 5,000 customers worldwide -- including names like Aon Insurance, ABN-Amro, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Johnson Controls, Hewlett Packard, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Discover, Hitachi Data Systems, John Deere, the U.S. Army, and the U.S. Air Force.

Among that client list are a number of firms in financial services and healthcare -- potentially representing a major setback for the players currently in the IM security market, who generally view those heavily regulated markets as relatively easy sells for their offerings.

Seven-year-old Blue Coat also is banking that enterprises, even those that it's not already servicing, would prefer to deal with a more established player in IT than a new startup.

"Talking to customers ... they aren't interested in buying a separate solution from startups just for IM control," Dauber said. "We're already in a good chunk of the customers, so we don't have to resell them form scratch."

Blue Coat also plans to compete on a price basis. While costs for hardware could total about $6,000, Dauber said the company is price service at $10 per user, before volume discounting. Aside from that initial cost for new users, the per-seat fees are about half to a third of what America Online (Quote, Company Info), and Microsoft (Quote, Company Info) and Yahoo! (Quote, Company Info) have said they would be charging for their enterprise IM gateways.

"People would just prefer to keep the vendors they've got," Dauber said. "And we're hearing that they think pricing is relatively high, on a per-user basis. Some of the products on the market require client-side software, and they didn't want to have to deal with that. And they just didn't want to have to deploy an entirely new scheme just for doing IM control."

It's still very early in the game for Blue Coat, which is currently able to show off only beta versions of its product. On the other hand, vendors including Akonix, IMlogic, e-Vantage, Endeavors, and IM-Age are shipping their offerings already. FaceTime Communications, known for its IM logging and auditing product, said it soon plans a full-fledged enterprise security product -- similarly intending to upsell current clients on its new solution.

The big public network owners -- America Online, Yahoo! and MSN -- also are now selling or gearing up to promote their own offerings. Those, however, exert control only on their own clients within enterprises.

Christopher Saunders is managing editor of InstantMessagingPlanet.com.

where's old_coast?

worth a read

http://www.vrtprj.de/forum/index.php?topic=Endeavors


btw the 750K trade looks like a short close


ains

http://reuters.multexinvestor.co.uk/research/Earnings.asp?ticker=TAD.L&country=GB&mxid=100037446&companyName=TADPOLE+TECHNOLOGY+PLC&sym=RE

that downtrend still intact.

will it drop to 2p before turning around or might it go bust before revenues accelerate?

the spread has norrowed down from 20plus % to a more respectable 13%

:-)

I must admit to being bemused at the idea of Tads as a share you can trade or invest by using charts - they are news led

It has probably escaped your attention that the company has now changed from being a hardware company to a specialised software company

IBM/AOL: sending a message to their rivals

IBM and America Online are to improve interoperability between their instant messaging systems.

February 4, 2003 6:30 PM GMT (Datamonitor) - The two technology giants have agreed to jointly conduct a pilot test between IBM Lotus Sametime and AOL's Enterprise AIM Services, aiming to make communication between the systems easier and more efficient. However, their rivals are also expected to improve their own corporate offerings over the next few months.


IBM and AOL have announced a joint pilot program, focused on extending existing integration between IBM Lotus Sametime and AOL's Enterprise AIM Services. Sametime users can currently access their AIM buddy list features through a tab on the Sametime contact list. The pilot will add back-end integration to "provide enhanced management capabilities and integrated directory features", through integration with the AIM Enterprise Gateway and Enterprise AIM Services.

The agreement is the latest move in AOL's plans to leverage its extensive user base for the AIM service to make the business more lucrative. Last week it agreed a reseller deal with HP Services.

AOL and IBM have worked together in the instant messaging (IM) sector for a while now. AOL formerly teamed up with Lotus to develop server-to-server IM interoperability, although the project was ultimately put to one side and given little attention.

In 2001, the US Federal Communications Commission placed restrictions on AOL's IM business as one of the terms for the AOL and Time Warner merger. This included the requirement that rival IM networks must be able to operate with AIM before AOL would be allowed to offer advanced IM-based high-speed services, such as video conferencing.

However, this isn't the only opportunity likely to present itself from the development of the IM sector. There is currently a security gap developing in the IM sector. Instant messages are rarely checked for content or access rights, or recorded from the server side, resulting in growing security concerns. AOL has brought in FaceTime Communications to develop this functionality.

Several of AOL's competitors, including Microsoft and Yahoo! are likely to improve their own corporate products over the next few months, making the market tougher. But, so far, these offerings are only designed to function with one network system.

what's the risk grade

about 500


Looks like another couple of shorts closing ......



ains

WebEx launches new enterprise conferencing system

London, February 5 2003, (netimperative)


by Chris Lake

WebEx, a developer of web communications technology, has today launched WebEx Enterprise Edition, a product that integrates its existing web meetings, training and support applications.


The company, which is targeting threefold growth in European sales, has introduced its latest product to the UK and the continent in a bid to capture additional market share, while making it easier for companies to engage in web-based meetings while enabling participants to share applications and work on projects.

The benefits of the software are largely based around increased productivity and efficiency, as the product will reduce the need for employees to travel to business meetings, shaving costs while making it quicker for work to be completed. The collaborative software supports popular applications such as Microsoft Word, Outlook and Photoshop.

Analysts suggest that web conferencing is breaking into the corporate mainstream - so much so that Microsoft last month raided its war chest to stake its claim on the predicted revenues for the sector.

WebEx, which has over 6,000 customers and accounts for more than half of the global market, believes Microsoft's purchase of rival Placeware for $200m last month will further validate web communications, even if it ultimately leads to increased competition.

www.webex.com

There we go - just where Tads comes in :-))


IM creates 'rampant security risk'
15:33 Wednesday 5th February 2003
Tony Hallett, silicon.com


Some IT managers are concerned that IM can send files that are not virus-checked past corporate firewalls , creating a threat to network security
Instant messaging (IM) is taking off in companies but self-installed consumer versions of software that allows this type of communication are posing a "rampant security risk" on networks.

Already some companies see IM as a time-wasting technology -- as was the case when email, Web access and even the telephone were first put on workers' desks -- but the latest warning, levelled by Blue Coat Systems, is based on three key factors.

The security appliance vendor highlights that IM is used to send files which firewalls don't pick up because they do not pass through corporate email systems; they are not checked for viruses; and they are not logged.

Nigel Hawthorn, Blue Coat's European marketing director, told silicon.com: "We're not against IM but companies must either stop end users installing IM software or, without such a policy, use tools to monitor its use. Both options come down to control."

Gartner analysts have declared 2003 the year when IM will take off and have warned IT managers that if they don't embrace the technology, their staff will do so often outside of the IT department's reach.

IDC has forecast there will be 255m worldwide IM users in the workplace by the end of 2006. However, according to a Blue Coat poll conducted outside train stations in the UK, around 88 percent of corporate IM users now only use the technology to communicate with friends and family.

Flagship providers of IM including AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! are now gearing up for pushing corporate versions of their software, which pay more attention to recording communications and security.

Steve Boom, senior vice president, Yahoo! Enterprise Solutions, said: "There is no rampant security risk. Users know messages aren't encrypted, for example, and the way forward isn't to control consumer IM but look at integrating it with [a company's] IT."

He said IM can in some cases be at least as secure as email, with systems based on directories, such as those provided by Microsoft or Novell, for authentication purposes.

nope it hasn't escaped my notice and she is behaving as expected.

might she pop to 2p before the next rise or possibly rise up to the resistance on the downtrend?

either way 2p looks likely from a charts and newsflow view if they don't start getting some revenue in. Afterall every GEM drawdown at this levels is very dilutive for existing equity holders.

wish all great success with this one, sorry ainsoph I am too busy to argue with you so let's at least pretend to be online buddies! (or perhaps I should say online biddies!) you choose

RAFLMAO

LOL!

:-))

;-o

nope it hasn't escaped my notice and she is behaving as expected.

might she pop to 2p before the next rise or possibly rise up to the resistance on the downtrend?

either way 2p looks likely from a charts and newsflow view if they don't start getting some revenue in. Afterall every GEM drawdown at these levels is very dilutive for existing equity holders.

wish all great success with this one, sorry ainsoph I am too busy to argue with you so let's at least pretend to be online buddies! (or perhaps I should say online biddies!) you choose

RAFLMAO

LOL!

:-))

;-o

6M buys today.

I guess the shorters are running for cover?


M

looks that way ..... interesting day ahead


ains

Moneylender
Would you mind explaining how 6m buys just widened the spread down?

Perhaps you will give us your take on the days trades Martini?


ains

On-Demand Application Distribution Solutions for the Enterprise:
Reducing the Cost of Software Deployment and Management
Through Web-enablement and Streaming of Applications

The Clift Hotel
495 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
February 18, 2003

Traditional methods of deploying software can be traced back to as long as products have been packaged and shipped. Even in today's digital economy, most software is still packaged and delivered in much the same way it has been since long before the advent of the Internet. The total cost of ownership (TCO) to distribute, manage and maintain software has always been high for the enterprise and user because this has always been complex and labor intensive.

Ever since the Internet became a commercially viable means to transfer and share digital information, enterprises have searched for efficient ways to web-enable their applications, distribute licensing costs and extend applications to their business partners. Web-enabling and streaming of applications would harness the power and reach of the Internet to give users instant, ubiquitous access to applications while lowering the total cost of ownership to the enterprise. This technology also provides security, anti-piracy and auditing capabilities.

This seminar will present:
- Market drivers that influence the trends within the On-demand Application Distribution Solutions (ODADS) space
- Guidelines to choosing the right ODADS solution for the enterprise
- Currently available technology in action
- AutoDesk: A case study on how enterprises are reaping the rewards of this emerging technology



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE SPEAKERS

The State of the ODADS Market
Mark Margevicius, Research Director, Gartner

Delivering and Managing Applications On-Demand
Kapi Attawar - VP Marketing, Endeavors Technology

.NET for Delivering ODADS and Web Services
Jas Sandhu - .NET Evangelist, Microsoft

AutoDesk: A Case Study
Robert Ng - Director, Business Planning and Analysis, AutoDesk


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ainsoph
Any ideas on the large trades recently and how they all manage mid price or better?
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