Security analytics and network virtualisation are set to drive interest in network visibility systems, followed by a longer-term interest in performance, according to Trevor Dearing, EMEA Director of Marketing for Gigamon.
He said while many enterprises may not have a direct need for the firm’s visibility tools, many of the advanced security appliances in the market do – he estimates up to half of installs from certain advanced threat prevention appliance vendors use Gigamon boxes.
“People are starting to realise if they have a firewall they can stop nothing – so what they have to be able to do is identify the threat once it’s landed, and stop it moving around when it’s in the business,” said Dearing.
“On the flipside of that, it’s virtualisation of the network – VMWare NSX, Cisco ACI – and the fact that everything’s diving in there, and it becomes much more difficult to track what’s happening. You actually lose visibility of everything. We’ve also done a lot of work with both VMWare and Cisco on how you automate the process of capturing the traffic at various points,” he added.
Another significant, but niche application for Gigamon’s systems is legal voice intercept – but this is something the firm is more reluctant to discuss publicly.
Eventually, Dearing suggests an application like Hadoop for network traffic will spur a greater interest in what’s happening within organisations’ infrastructure: “What we can do is effectively look at all the traffic, and try and get an insight into the traffic that’s on the move – to give a better view of what’s going on, from not just a security perspective, but from a traffic visualisation perspective. And some of the service provider analytics vendors are moving into the enterprise.”
