IBM and Cisco agree security alliance

Graham Titterington, Senior Analyst

Cisco and IBM are extending their sales and marketing alliance to include security. The two companies say that their security products are now more closely integrated. Cisco is focusing on supplying its "self defending network" products to the two companies' customers, while IBM is focusing on selling its security and systems management products, and its IT services.

Comment: This is another illustration of the trend identified by Ovum in 2003 of the large IT infrastructure vendors moving into the security sector. In the immediate future, users should benefit from integration of the two vendor’s user provisioning components, reducing duplicated effort, and moving towards a consistent automated approach to this important operational issue. In the longer term, users should see more concerted and automated response to threats in the IT environment. This should help to deliver IBM’s vision of "self healing", or autonomic, systems.

The specifics of the agreement look like a marriage of convenience, a lucky break. But this is a move that is swimming with the tide. Enterprises want to rationalise their IT suppliers and they want to simplify the job of securing their systems. Since most large organisations are already major customers of both IBM and Cisco, they will be receptive to giving these vendors a slice of the security budget if they put forward a coherent argument. Microsoft continues with its strategy of incorporating more and more functions (including security functions) into Windows, offering a highly integrated "all or nothing" option to its customers.

The losers will be the specialist security companies, and particularly the big ones such as Symantec, that will be excluded from some of their most lucrative markets. For enterprises, the fear is of lock-in and exclusion of "best of breed" products from the portfolio.

To find out how Ovum can help your organisation understand these issues, see Software@Ovum, you can also contact Graham Titterington directly on gct@ovum.com.