Sometimes, I get to do a vendor briefing that really makes me sit up and get excited. That happened yesterday when I spoke with Ray Wizbowski of ForeScout Technologies.
Here's the story: ForeScout recently announced the integration of their identity-based NAC solutions with Sun's identity management products. That in and of itself is *big* news, as it points to the integration N-IdM and A-IdM that we've been calling for over the past year. But beyond that lies the story of *how* it occurred...
Ray relayed to me that ForeScout began to explore these connections at last year's Digital ID World (something that always makes me happy), and that the Sun conversations evolved out of initial contacts made there. From that point, ForeScout polled its customer base to see who would like this type of integration, and one as-yet-unnamed, Fortune 500 type jumped up and said, "I want that and I want it NOW."
That is the sea change that is happening.
The convergence of N-IdM and A-IdM won't occur because the companies in those spaces wake up and say, "this might be nice." It will occur because their customers are already *demanding* that it occur. All of this means that the NAC vendors that are actively realizing that they're "identity companies" are the ones that will succeed, while those that focus on more traditional "NAC" disciplines will be left behind (or in the case of Cisco, forced to buy a smaller player that's figured it out).
Kudos to ForeScout for taking the lead on this. Something tells me that this won't be the last time we hear from them about deals being done and customer needs being met.
--Eric Norlin
