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IBM to Buy ISS for $1.3 Billion

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the here-comes-the-licensing-shift dept.

gerald626 writes "IBM announced today that they have formed an agreement to purchase ISS for 1.3 billion dollars." From the article: " The all-cash transaction of about $28 per share is meant to bolster IBM's ability to deliver security services to corporations, the company said. ISS builds network protection products and services, including intrusion detection and monitoring tools. IBM said it intends to use ISS's expertise and software to provide more robust security-related services to its corporate customers."

10 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Nice headline by 192939495969798999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe in this case it would be wise to spell out the acronym, so we don't all have a tizzy that they're buying *THE* ISS, the one orbiting the Earth.

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    stuff |
  2. Re:Why would IBM... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Those first 11 replies use a feature of human communication called "sarcasm". These comments are meant as a (friendly and jokingly) attack on the poster, because there is no explanation of what ISS stands for.

    Test what you have learned now: try to detemine the level of sarcasm in this post!

  3. Re:Star Trek & IBM by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    McCoy: Psst! Jim! He's talking about Internet Security Systems!

    (Kirk looks sheepish)

    Kirk: Doh!

    (IBM rolls its eyes)

    (Yes, of course I knew what TFA was talking about. The headline, however, was just too good to pass up! :P)

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    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  4. Re:You guys are so goofy! by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Geez, everyone's telling the same lame "ISS" = "International Space Station" joke.

    Shows that Slashdot is going to the dogs, Goofy, Pluto or other. Yeah, Ha Ha Ha, big yuks all around. It's probably a bit like hell, being told the same dumb joke over and over and over.

    So the reality is, with Microsoft getting into the security biz, so is IBM. Looks like security companies are the new Hot Property.

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    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  5. Pfffft! by irregular_hero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is a horrible move on IBM's part.

    ISS is having its clock cleaned in the market, pulled apart by high-performance enterprise IPS vendors (Tipping Point, Juniper, Cisco, and the like) on one side, and having their thunder stolen by platform security vendors (Sygate, Check Point, Netscreen, and, yes, even Cisco) on the other -- not to mention the "built-in" stuff that Microsoft has released and the more advanced platform security controls that the company is prepping for release.

    Not too long ago, ISS made the fateful decision to knife most of its IDS/IPS product lines in the back by discontinuing support for "General Purpose" servers and third party appliances, effectively forcing all of its enterprise customers to buy an "owned" ISS appliance (the Proventia series). Companies with large deployments of ISS RealSecure on now End of Lifed platforms suddenly found themselves offered a year of update support and another capital outlay to "upgrade" to Proventia appliances. Not many followed the company down that path, but the ones that did get "first cut" appliances found that they, well, sucked. The company then recentered on a more "appliance"-looking hardware platform, but, by then, the damage was done.

    Then ISS took a market-leading desktop security product, BlackICE, and folded it into their IDS/IPS management product. The integration damn near killed a lot of existing BlackICE customers, not to mention the fact that succeeding software releases were, in many cases, incompatible with previous releases. Those customers who bravely rolled out a BlackICE installation found themselves in the unenviable position of having to do the rollout all over again.

    Then there's ISS's reputation for "leading-edge" security research. Enter the firing of Michael Lynn related to the Cisco BlackHat presentation... They look like idiots out of the whole ordeal, more interested in protecting their corporate butts from the Cisco PR engine than the disclosure of even SANTITIZED security information.

    IBM? Good luck with your new toy. It was broken before you bought it.

    1. Re:Pfffft! by irregular_hero · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hey, glad to see ISS's PR department knows about Slashdot. And, hey! You're right, I was affected by the product line "simplification"! Glad to meet you, now sit down and listen.

      Knifing the Nokia relationship left lots of enterprise customers in the dust, not because it was done, but it was done while 1) the product was still being actively pushed by both companies, and 2) without an assessment of what impact it would have on the customer base. Let's face it, the Nokia stuff was axed because ISS wanted to enter the appliance space, without regard to existing deployments. I still remember the arrogant tact of ISS's sales staff when they approached us with the news AND a quote for replacing all of our deployments with Proventia -- it was 20% higher than our TCO on Nokia! That was, and still is, a bad BUSINESS move, and left a lot of customers with a bad taste in their mouths about ISS. That aside...

      I find your assertion about the Proventia G and M being "wildly popular" a bit dubious for a product that has only had about a year and a half in the market (and, yes, I'm counting that from the launch of the G400 and G2000 -- as an enterprise customer, they're the only ones we every considered). I talk with a lot of ISS customers. The big ones -- the truly big ones -- consider themselves saddled with their Proventia investment. They see other vendors coming in providing multi-gigabit solutions that operate at wire speeds on all packet sizes... They see IPS functionality being rolled into core switch fabrics, some of them on general purpose blades... They begin to wonder why they're invested in edge IPS when their firewalls are starting to gain the same feature functionality... And they get angry when a Core update munges their SiteProtector AGAIN... Leave the assessment of "wildly popular" to the point in time when these users report themselves as being totally satisfied with the investment they've made, not because our installed base is X^2 instead of X.

      I know you've still got a "general purpose" network sensor out there. We used to run a few of those, until we had little nagging issues with XPUs where the proposed solution was "get to Proventia" because "that's where the development is being done now". And although your Network Sensor has an "inline mode," I know for a fact that your sales force actively steers people away from using it as an IPS. Having a product available is not the same as being able to provide undeniably good support for it -- just ask CA about that one.

      As for the BlackICE (nee Desktop Protector, nee Proventia Desktop) installation, hey; what can I say? I wish we could all adopt a product at a point along its lifespan where everything is as we want it. But that didn't happen for us -- and for other customers (mostly bleeding-edge adopters). To speak to the "integration" with SiteProtector, I'd say the selling point there is relatively limited compared to what it was proposed to be when sold to us. But what do I know? I'm just a guy that has to redeploy a bunch of crap that will be replaced by GPO-managed Windows firewall rules and next-gen platform health checking that Microsoft will eventually give us for free. For the second time.

      Thanks for the response, though.

  6. Serious Comment by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At the risk of disrupting the fun, I'd like to interject a serious comment. ISS resells some real security technologies that IBM has been missing from their offerings for a long time. In the network security space, they resell some important technology that has traditionally been in the "Cisco camp" and thus mostly implemented by enterprise customers that don't do a lot of business with IBM. This could really change the landscape of enterprise security... in a few years when IBM manages to get ISS integrated into their sales channels.

  7. Re:Why would IBM... by Metzli · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I disagree completely. It is a jumbled mouthful to discuss how Voice Over Internet Protocal Session Initiation Protocol traffic has Network Address Translation traversal issues because the Internet Protocol address is embedded into the Transfer Control Protocol / Internet Protocol packet. That's much harded to understand than discussing how VoIP SIP traffic has NAT traversal issues because the IP address is embedded into the TCP/IP packet.

    It does require knowledge of the acronyms, but the jumbled mass of words that would need to be used to decribe the situation are (IMHO) much worse.

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    "It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
  8. Re:Why would IBM... by CarnivorousCoder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Then perhaps a good heuristic is "the broader your audience, the fewer acronyms you should use".

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    What are you doing now, you lazy drunken obscene unsayable son of an unnameable gipsy obscenity?
  9. Re:Finally! A commercial reason for space habitats by muzzmac · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wow! Now that would make for a popular nuclear missile target I'll bet.