Comments for Rook Consulting

Comment on EMC & Archer Pave Way for 2010 Consolidation by Paul Stamp

Paul Stamp — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:23:54 +0000

No offense taken guys! Nice to see that someone other than a close family member reads my blog. Luckily, during my time at Forrester I used to work closely with folks like Mike Rasmussen, Chris McClean so I’m not completely a newbie to the GRC space. After 12 years I’ve never claimed to be an expert in the security space, so you certainly won’t hear any self proclaimed GRC “expertise” coming from me – just a stream of semi connected thoughts, especially for those trying to get their heads around this stuff.

Comment on EMC & Archer Pave Way for 2010 Consolidation by Joe Fantuzzi

Joe Fantuzzi — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:50:57 +0000

Hi JJ,

Thanks for a thoughtful commentary on the GRC space and the RSA acquisition. As you know, I am the newly hired CEO at Agiliance. Thrilled to start of my tenure with such news from Archer. Their body of work is strong and we at Agiliance, along with Archer, established leadership focused on customer success in this market segment. As the industry knows, Agiliance’s focus is a pure play platform and applications that preserve investments in IT and security, and minimize TCO. We remain the independent leader.

I read with humor Summer Blount’s commentary on knowing the market well ahead of Archer. The CA product is based on the Niku Clarity solution, purchased in 2005. I know the ex CEO and management at Niku well, and frankly this is a stretch. More importantly, Clarity is very similar to Archer, but without the domain knowledge. Agiliance rarely sees CA. They offer low domain and high TCO. That is a great formula for customer success.

Regarding integration, investment bankers tell Agiliance the Archer development team will report to the RSA technical team, and the RSA sales and marketing team will be part of the RSA sales team. I would have expected the Archer sales and marketing team to be more aligned with EMC Global Services, since that appears a better fit. Regardless, Archer as we know doesn’t appear to be large enough to be left standalone like VMWare, RSA or DCMT.

Comment on EMC & Archer Pave Way for 2010 Consolidation by J.Thompson

J.Thompson — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:40:19 +0000

… its no surprise that Paul is excited. The legs that Archer will get when coupled with the distribution network that EMC has in place will be exciting to watch. The challenge will be connecting the dots and integrating… and more importantly, maintaining the talent that is the brains behind Archer’s current success.

[[Does anyone know what is going on with the retention / transition plan? Please comment back if you do.]]

It was also interesting to read CA’s take on this whole thing by their own Sumner Blount. Sumner’s bottom line to EMC’s move into the GRC space:

“We recognized the importance of integration for cost-effective GRC management, and have made this a foundation of our overall IT GRC strategy. EMC/RSA’s move validates what CA knew long ago.”

How’s that for a confident jab?

http://community.ca.com/blogs/grc/archive/2010/01/07/emc-rsa-archer-the-grc-consolidation-trend-continues.aspx#leavecomment

Comment on EMC & Archer Pave Way for 2010 Consolidation by Mark

Mark — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:31:48 +0000

Paul Stamp (SIEM evangelist at EMC) seems to be very excited about the deal. It will be interesting to see how many titles of people who have nothing to do with GRC are now going to be GRC expert at EMC (no offense to Paul).

from http://tokensecurityguy.typepad.com/token_security_guy/2010/01/token-security-guy-is-now-token-grc-guywell-kinda.html

Comment on EMC & Archer Pave Way for 2010 Consolidation by Archer and EMC: More To The Story | Brightfly, Inc.

Archer and EMC: More To The Story | Brightfly, Inc. — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:18:56 +0000

[...] We also agree with the guys over at Rook that this might mark a bit of a thaw in security deals. The price tag (rumored to be anywhere from $120 million to $225 million) has woken the sleeping VC giants which have started sniffing around this space for interesting start-ups to fund. Specifically, Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, who has a good bit wrapped up in BigFix could arrange a marriage with an up-and-coming IT GRC player or maybe even an established one such as Agiliance who already has an integration story. Speaking of Agiliance, with their partnership with McAfee, and McAfee’s churn around IT GRC we think that their integration story holds some weight in the context of state-based security and compliance management and could be picked up fairly easily. A start-up in the space that bears mention is Lockpath. Founded by two early members of the Archer team, Chris Caldwell and Chris Goodwin have deep experience in this market and were recently named Microsoft Start-up of the Day. [...]

Comment on EMC & Archer Pave Way for 2010 Consolidation by Tweets that mention EMC & Archer Pave Way for 2010 Consolidation - Rook Consulting -- Topsy.com

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:23:04 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Edward, J.J. Thompson. J.J. Thompson said: RT @rookconsulting EMC & Archer Pave Way for 2010 Consolidation – Rook Consulting http://is.gd/5P3Dh [...]

Comment on ISC2 SecureIndianapolis by mike

mike — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:37:05 +0000

That was a solid event. Brandon brought a fresh perspective to a – normally boring – subject. When will Rook be “active” in Indy?

Comment on Are the 26 Red Flags a Rx for Compliance? by Glerimma

Glerimma — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 09:22:17 +0000

Good work!

Comment on ISC2 Visitors – Endpoint Product Eval Matrix by “Endpoint Security is Sexy” + Eval Matrix | INFOSEC BRIEF

“Endpoint Security is Sexy” + Eval Matrix | INFOSEC BRIEF — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:25:27 +0000

[...] The matrix may be downloaded here [...]

Comment on Are the 26 Red Flags a Rx for Compliance? by Roberto

Roberto — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:08:58 +0000

cool blog. this intel will be a big help. keep it coming!