Security

StillSecure has been nailing it in the service provider segment with deals with XO , ViaWest, CoreSite, and others recently. StillSecure fundamentally believes that service providers – telcos, datacenter, cloud providers – will be the channel to market for security solutions and I agree. They have built an amazing set of solutions for colocation and dedicated server environments and have solutions that can apply to some higher-end cloud users. Today they are announcing a new host-based firewall management solution in conjunction with SoftLayer – a leader in the cloud market. Aimed at all cloud users, StillSecure’s new solution is the start of a major initiative for the company and is also a new category of solutions. ...

My long time friend Alan Shimel has been blogging up a storm on Network World (if you want to hear any amusing story, ask him about the first time he met me.) When Alan started writing his column for Network World he asked me for introductions to a bunch of our portfolio companies that were using open source. Alan is a tough critic and calls it like he sees it so while I knew there was no guarantee that he’d go easy on the companies, I knew that Alan would do an even handed job of highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. I also know that everyone I invest in values any kind of feedback – both good and bad – and they work especially hard to delight their customers so any kind of feedback will make them better. ...

On Monday, StillSecure announced that it has acquired ProtectPoint. ProtectPoint is a managed security service provider (MSSP) and immediately adds a portfolio of managed security products to StillSecure’s award-winning product arsenal. Alan Shimel, the Chief Strategy Officer of StillSecure, does an excellent job of explaining the reasons for the acquisition in his post titled StillSecure acquires ProtectPoint, entering the MSSP market – Why? This is the second time in less than a month that a company I’m on the board of has made an acquisition. At the end of January, in my post titled Rally Software is a Buyer I wrote: ...