Layer7′s customer base, technology of interest, CEO says

Layer7 has good technology, and will likely attract interest as the XML security market undergoes further consolidation, said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink.

Read more at: Merger Market

IBM acquires DataPower

“DataPower’s product suite of integration, security and performance appliances will fill various holes within IBM’s broad SOA offering,” says Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at research firm ZapThink. IBM is acquiring the sales leader in the application-oriented networking market — and a company that already has a solid relationship with IBM’s software, hardware and services groups, he says.

Read more at: NetworkWorld

Cisco To Target XML Messaging Market

Ronald Schmelzer, whose research firm ZapThink studies the XML and Web services market, said Cisco wants to take a closer look at the content of the messages themselves, rather than just data about where the messages are going or where they came from. By inspecting the message traffic, Cisco can become much smarter or aware about what that traffic is doing.

For example, if Cisco sees that a message is a Web services (define) call to a purchasing service, it can automatically route, apply security and add constraints to that message. If it’s an XML document for a Web site, the device would apply some transformation and logging to that message.

The bottom line is that such technology, known as application-oriented networking, improves the efficiency of XML-based messages and ultimately, the performance of Web services, which ZapThink said will be a multi-billion industry over the next five years.

“Clearly, Cisco is going to be a challenger for many of the firms that have XML appliances in the market,” said Schmelzer. “However, it’s not entirely clear what features the AONs box will have and how they will enter the market, or when for that matter. So, we’ll have to reserve judgment on its capabilities and impact on the market until it comes out.”

Read more at: InternetNews

Fine-Tuning Of The Internet

“XML smooths things for servers and programmers,” said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at the research firm ZapThink. “But it puts new strains on the network guys.”

Read more at: Investor’s Business Daily

Move afoot to speed XML traffic

Lamb’s experience is likely to become the norm. Research firm ZapThink says XML is expected to account for more than 25% of network traffic by 2006, up from just under 2% today. And Forrester says 1 billion clients will be sending and receiving XML messages based on the Simple Object Access Protocol by 2008.

Read more at: NetworkWorld

Case Study: e2Open

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Sarvega Accelerates XML

“Sarvega is a startup,” asserts Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink LLC. “Their biggest challenge is getting adoption in the market. They should be looking at partnerships.” While some observers question how long it will be before features for securing XML are integrated into more traditional security appliances in the network, ZapThink’s Schmelzer says he expects people will opt for a separate appliance.

“With traditional firewalls, XML passes through them like a hot knife through butter,” he says.

Read more at: Light Reading

Startups tackle XML traffic

“In the last three months or so we’ve seen a number of startups emerge, addressing these challenges,” said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink. “And it is likely that we’ll soon hear more from Cisco Systems, Lucent, Nortel, and 3Com.”
According to Schmelzer, content inspection is an intensive task, particularly when it comes to avoiding latency. In a report issued in July, Schmelzer calls this new class of products “XML proxies,” or hardware and software solutions that listen for XML traffic on the network. He added they can operate as an XML gateway or as applications on the network.

Read more at: InfoWorld

XML – Chance für Startups

Tools, die den XML-basierenden (Extensible Markup Language) Datenverkehrs absichern sollen, entwickeln zur Zeit hauptsächlich junge Unternehmen. Laut Ron Schmelzer, Analyst beim mit den Themen XML und Web Services beschäftigten Marktforschungsunternehmen ZapThink, haben jedoch Hersteller wie Cisco, Lucent, Nortel und 3Com ähnliche Produkte in der Pipeline. Sie basieren auf Techniken, die SOAP-Pakete (Simple Object Access Protocol) analysieren. Die Pakete enthalten XML-Daten, die über das Transportprotokoll HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) transportiert werden.

Read more at: ComputerWoche (German)

“XML’s Nasty Little Secret”

As if IT security pros didn’t have enough to worry about, a new study warns that firewall and routing platforms cannot intelligently process XML content.

This is huge, as XML is the backbone of Web services protocols. The study, run by ZapThink, estimates that XML represents 2 percent of network traffic today, but will increase to 25 percent by 2006. Others say XML will comprise 60 percent of network traffic by next year, and more startlingly, the Web services security industry will grow from $40 million today to $4.4 billion in 2006.

Read more at: TechWeb