We’re hearing rumours that data leak prevention vendor Vericept is about to be sold to an accounting firm, with an announcement on September 15.

Most DLP vendors have now been acquired. Eg McAfee bought Reconnex in 8/08, RSA/EMC bought Tablus in 8/07, Websense bought PortAuthority in 1/07. The market’s been rather disappointing: DLP revenues have been much lower than expected.

…David Ferris

GTB Technologies makes a data leak prevention product called GTB Inspector. It’s recently been revamped. Here’s a summary:

• Appliance dynamically scans all protocols and ports over a network link.
• Can log/quarantine/block/redact offending material.
• Policy-based encryption.
• Also scans endpoints; e.g., for downloads to detachable USB drive.
• Main competition: Symantec/Vontu, McAfee/Reconnex.
• Does real-time content checking so can catch material on the fly.
• Pricing: $20,000 for base unit, plus user pricing (e.g., $49.94/user for 500 users, $32.25/user for 10,000 users).
• Company is privately held.

Comments:

• The DLP market is still very small, despite plenty of hype. Most vendors have very small revenues. For example, one of the more visible players, Reconnex, was doing about $4M/year when it was sold to McAfee in late 2008. Ferris Research estimates that the market for DLP solutions does not currently exceed $100M.
• GTB was missed in the recent wave of acquisitions of DLP products, in which EMC/RSA acquired Tablus, Symantec acquired Vontu, Websense acquired PortAuthority, and more recently McAfee acquired Reconnex. Vericept and GTB are some of the independents left.
• CEO Uzi Yair believes the major strengths of the product are:
  • Greater accuracy than with competing technologies. This may very well be the case; with an hour’s demonstration of the product, we were unable to corroborate the assertion. If he’s right, this would be an important advantage. Inaccuracy is a major problem with today’s data leak prevention technology. We’re tentatively skeptical about the assertion of greater accuracy; we’d be delighted to be proven wrong.
  • The ability to block material in real time. Yair says his competitors can’t do this; they can only log offending material. We’re surprised at this, but if his assertion about the competitors is correct, we’d agree it’s an important strength.
  • The product scans all ports and protocols; Yair asserts, again to our surprise, that the competition doesn’t do this. If they don’t, they should.

… David Ferris

We’re writing an analysis of CA’s recent acquisition of Orchestria. We’d like to hear from anyone that can help us with the following:

• Orchestria’s revenue and profit/loss history
• Terms of the deal
• The main business problems Orchestria faced over the last two years
• How Orchestria sought a buyer, and how the negotiations with CA proceeded
• External funding received by Orchestria during its history
• The main challenges CA will face in making the acquisition a success
• Comparable transactions. We know about McAfee/Reconnex, Symantec/Vontu, EMC/Tablus, and Websense/PortAuthority
• Related acquisitions by CA: price paid, and price/revenue multiple. We know about Netegrity and iLumin
• Any Orchestria technology that will be made redundant as a result of the acquisition. Ie, Orchestria technology that won’t be used by CA
• CA’s identity and access management revenues
• Any other information that’s relevant!

Contact David Ferris on +1 415 367 3436, or david.ferris@ferris.com. Unless you indicate otherwise, we will assume that all communications are confidential. In return, let us know any transaction information you would like to have, and we will try to return the favor.

Thanks and hope to hear from you.

david

Please post interesting insights into this vendor’s business and products/services here.

If you wish to post anonymously, please email david.ferris@ferris.com. Please identify yourself so that David can determine that the posting should be taken seriously. Alternatively, you can phone him on +1 415 367 3436. We’ll post your material, without identifying you.

Webinar held September 19, 2007. One hour.

Regulations and policy compliance, e-discovery, and information leak protection are driving demand for technologies that scan emails, instant messages, HTTP flows, static files, and other electronic content to ensure that information is used appropriately. The first product to offer this was Clearswift’s MIMEweeper; other players include Marshal, Orchestria, Proofpoint, Reconnex, SonicWALL, SurfControl, Tablus, Vericept, Vontu, Websense/PortAuthority, and Workshare.

In this webinar, some of the leading vendors in the content control market concisely present their solutions, their competititors, and what they see as their key competitive strengths. A Q&A session follows.

The session features:

• Marshal
• Nemx
• Websense

Webinar 726.

Important Questions Addressed by This Webinar Include:

• What are the main techniques used by content control products?
• What are the key differentiators between content control products?
• What are the main ways in which products are being enhanced?

Speakers

• David Ferris, Senior Analyst, Ferris Research. David has been professionally involved with messaging and collaboration technologies since 1991. He got into computer science research as a graduate student at Stanford University and was one of the first 100 email users. He also wrote the first syndicated column in the computer industry. Since then, David has written hundreds of articles and bulletins on messaging and collaboration, and co-authored three books. A leading messaging and collaboration expert, he is frequently quoted in the technology and business press.
• Bradley Anstis, Director of Research and Product Development, Marshal. Bradley is responsible for ensuring that Marshal stays on top of emerging security trends and market requirements. He joined Marshal in early 2004 in its Auckland office and moved to London and Houston with NetIQ. He returned to New Zealand to set up Marshal’s R&D center after the company’s managed buyout at the end of 2005. A 20-year veteran in the IT industry, Bradley most recently held technical management positions with Protocom Development Systems and Citrix in Asia-Pacific.
• Larry Trenwith, Vice President of Marketing, Nemx Software. Larry has more than 25 years of sales, marketing, and business management experience in the software IT environment. At Nemx, he is responsible for strategic marketing, business, and channel development. Before joining Nemx, Larry was Managing Partner for a sales and marketing consulting services company and Vice President of Sales for a corporate text search and retrieval technology that was subsequently acquired by Hummingbird.
• Saurabh Bhatnagar, Senior Product and Alliances Manager, Websense. Saurabh’s primary responsibilities include business strategy and analysis for Websense’s security products. He manages all technology alliances for Websense’s security products and evangelizes Websense solutions with customers, channel partners, and industry analysts. Saurabh joined Websense in August 2004. Before that, he held regional solutions marketing and alliance management roles with Hewlett-Packard.

Who Is This Webinar Suitable For?

This webinar is suitable for IT support staff and vendor product management staff.

RSA announced its intent to acquire Tablus, a provider of data loss prevention solutions. Details of the transaction are not being disclosed. The acquisition is expected to be completed in 4Q2007. More

Ferris Research attended the 15th RSA Conference last week. Focusing on the security market, it was held in San Jose, Calif., not the previous venue of San Francisco. It attracted some 250 exhibiting vendors and about 5,000 free and paid attendees.

We spotted these vendors, who were showing products and services related to messaging and collaboration:

• Barracuda
• Bell Security Solutions
• Bivio
• BorderWare
• CertifiedMail
• Cloudmark
• CipherTrust
• Entrust
• Eset
• FaceTime
• Microsoft (FrontBridge and Antigen)
• GFi
• GROUP Technologies
• Identum
• IronPort
• Kaspersky
• MailFrontier
• MailFoundry
• McAfee
• MessageLabs
• MessageLevel
• Mirapoint
• Panda
• PGP
• Postini
• PostX
• RIM
• Sendmail
• StillSecure
• Symantec
• Sophos
• Tablus
• Trend Micro
• Tumbleweed
• VoIPshield
• Voltage
• Webroot
• Webwasher
• Workshare

Apologies if we’ve missed anyone.

… Richi Jennings