Nine-year-old Reactivity’s XML parsing engine features in a range of security gateways for data centers, DMZs and developers in the test lab. It also offers single-console management of all three use cases with its Reactivity Manager.
Meanwhile, Cisco threw its hat into the XML ring two years ago with the announcement of AON, an initiative to deliver app-aware networking based on moving messages intelligently and establishing the right relationship between apps – prioritizing VoIP and business-critical apps over web surfing and so on.
The rationale for this, according to George Kurian, vice president of Cisco’s app delivery business unit, was that the company is seeing the need for network-smart infrastructure to complement the distributed application models of SOA and Web 2.0.
Not surprisingly, rivals claim that converging XML and IP parsing approaches is akin to mixing apples and oranges.
XML is a different animal from an IP packet, said Dimitri Sirota, vice president of marketing for Layer 7 Technologies Inc, one of Reactivity’s competitors. For starters, he noted, IP doesn’t have the kind of complex headers that you have on an XML envelope.
When AON was launched, Reactivity went to the trouble of issuing a statement welcoming Cisco’s entry as market validation, while at the same time arguing that it had a three-year lead that gave it important differentiators such as breadth of support for the 60-plus platforms out there supporting XML web services.
Sirota of Layer 7 indirectly concurred, noting that while his firm typically saw DataPower and Reactivity in head to head bake-offs, he only saw Cisco three times. And Cisco didn’t win any of the deals.
Computer Business Review actually speculated that, rather than try and catch up, Cisco might choose to buy Reactivity or one of its competitors, so it’s nice to be proven right. And paving the way for the eventual acquisition, the company went through a clean sweep of the executive suite that brought in several former Cisco principals about three months ago.
Of course, Cisco is not alone among industry heavyweights in snapping up XML minnows in preparation for the race to supply the necessary infrastructure for the world of web services. Indeed, it’s been a veritable land grab, with IBM buying DataPower and Intel nabbing Sarvega.
Kurian said that, beyond the XML security that Reactivity already provides on its gateways, the parsing engine will be able to accelerate XML traffic through latency mitigation and offloading XML processing. This presumably means Cisco will either develop its own ASICs to act as offload engines, or find a suitable supplier and buy them.
A larger question, of course, is whether XML firewall appliances really should remain a standalone, best-of-breed market.
Since IBM acquired Datapower, it has kept its options open as to repackaging much of the logic as extensions to SOA governance or Tivoli’s federated identity tools.
As for Intel, it’s kept fairly mum, but it would be reasonable to conclude that it hopes to build some of Sarvega’s firmware into chipsets that would power other third party appliances.
The fact is that XML firewall security has a rough potential fit into several broader segments: IT infrastructure management, application management, or the less mature SOA governance area. So that places prospective suitors like CA, IBM, and HP in play. You could argue that Layer 7 and Forum Systems, other XML security appliance vendors, could plug some gaps.
The main hang-up, however, is the folks worrying about XML security tend to be from the software side, while the folks running IT infrastructure and security speak a different language.
That’s a gap that HP is trying to fill by blending the former Overview network node management business with its recent Mercury acquisition, and using Mercury’s Business Technology Optimization branding.
Interestingly, Layer 7 already is one of HP/Mercury’s Systinet Governance Interoperability Framework partners. So, if we were in the mood to predict another acquisition, this would be it.
Back to Reactivity, there are potential synergies in the Cisco deal as well, if you accept the notion that XML and IP management should be converged.
When data in XML is traversing the wire, it uses the SOAP encapsulation protocol to run over HTTP, which Cisco can accelerate using the technology it acquired when it bought FineGround.
Kurian acknowledged that the Reactivity technology would be suitable for integration with our application acceleration platform.
Kurian would not be drawn, however, on whether the XML Operating System, or XOS, that underpins the existing appliances from Reactivity would stay as is, or the smarts from the acquired portfolio would be ported to Cisco’s own IOS.
We integrate acquired technologies in three ways, he began. First we sell it as a standalone appliance, sometimes with some of our own Cisco technology. Then we put it on a blade to go into our switches or routers, and finally, we componentize it and bring it into IOS. He declined to speculate whether the Reactivity technology would go all the way through to the third phase, however.
