I am a sports fan in general, but I especially love the NBA and the OKC Thunder. I follow OKC closely and will probably root for them for years to come (their recent head coaching decision aside). I also love Russell Westbrook and will follow him on whatever team he plays on, even though he left OKC. When it comes to sports I am extremely loyal, but at the end of the day my decision to remain loyal in teams and players won’t negatively affect the world that I live in. The opposite is true in cyber security brands, where products we use need to work for our organizations and achieve a desired result. Following a sole brand could cause huge mistakes for our clients and limit their overall security.
Technology companies are always adding new companies to their portfolio through acquisitions and mergers. This is done in order to grow their portfolio and their offerings to their current and prospective clients. The products they acquire are often rebranded and rolled out under a new name. In fact, most of the new product offerings you see major networking companies offer most likely started with an acquisition or purchase of a technology from another company.
Here are just a few recent examples of products you know:
Company: Fortinet
Technology: Wireless
Current Marketing Name: FortiAP
Original Brand Acquired: Meru Networks
Company: Cisco
Technology: DNS Security
Current Marketing Name: Umbrella
Original Brand Acquired: Open DNS
Company: Extreme Networks
Technology: Wireless
Current Marketing Name: Extreme Wireless
Original Brand Acquired: Aerohive
The other side could be that the product is not original, but white-labeled. This is where the product is marketed under a name from the company you know but is really something else under the hood. This is very common with wireless hardware, server technology, and even switching.
Best-of-breed products are those that are built from the ground up and are sill on the market today. Examples of these include WatchGuard Firewalls, Cisco Meraki Wireless, Palo Alto Firewalls, and Cylance AV. The founders of these companies usually started somewhere else but ventured out on their own and built a new product based on their experience.
Business is hard and in the technology resale space it is very cut throat and can be difficult to compete in. From a manufacturer’s perspective, it may make sense to white-label a product to keep your go-to-market costs low or to sell your technology to the highest bidder so that they can build off of it. Companies must make decisions that reflect their overall interest; I will always applaud that. However, what I am concerned with is what is right for each organization. Whether the product you use is original, re-branded, or white-labeled all that matters is if is the right fit for you and helps you achieve your mission. The purpose of this article is to get you to explore options when making technology selections.
There is not a single network that I can think of in the last several years that we designed and deployed that is 100% from one hardware manufacturer. And there is not one network that I can think of that has the same brand on the hardware side as the software side. The reason is simple, not everyone does everything the best. We want what is best.
Take into consideration the following example. Let’s say we are standing up a new healthcare office, which is a core part of our business. They will need firewalls, switches, wireless, and AV. We could easily get aggressive pricing if we used the same brand across the whole company, let’s say from Fortinet. But we would also have to sacrifice on some security philosophy to sell it that way. More so we would have to accept the fact that we could have issues in lead-lined exam rooms with wireless, and even lack solutions. Once we start making all of these exceptions, we start to contort ourselves into a pretzel and the solution starts to be duct taped together.
Another scenario - Let’s say we love Meraki for wireless and their cloud-based controller; one day we get a lead and it’s for wireless on a cruise ship. We know going in that internet will be spotty and we will have unreliable access to the internet at times. We certainly would not want a cloud-based wireless deployment here. Following just our favorite brand, we see that many excuses must then be made in order for the operation to work correctly.
You should never be blindly loyal to a brand in technology. It is your job as an IT decision maker to always evaluate your needs when contracts come up for renewal. You need to make sure the technology and the brand still fit your business model and trajectory. Things changes and keeping the same tech in place without evaluation is a bad idea.
Always get demo licenses or equipment and run it through the wringer. See how it works on the network, what it affects, and if you get better results. It is quite possible nothing needs to change and you stick with the current brand. But until you evaluate you will never know.
The next time you have a contract renewal on any cyber security software, application, hardware, or technology take the time and demo something new. It could be well worth a look. We are a vendor agnostic company and will always act in our client’s best interests.