Telecom,Security & P2P

By this acquisition, HP enters enterprise networking market with strong threat management product line from Tippingpoint.

The vulnerability and threats research of DVLabs will greatly improve HP’s capability and image at these areas, so that HP’s competition against IBM will become more effective.  X-Force of ISS is one of the critical advantages of IBM over HP, at overall one-stop IT arena.

Historically, after the acquisition of an independent security company, their selling model and focus will change to more aligned with major businesses.  As for HP’s scenario, their security product lines, including the IPS/UTM, focuses on their global enterprise customers and outsourcing partners.  The security department, mostly, will lose some momentum to find and obtain new customers, instead, they will be more interested at existing customers, bundled within other bigger IT/service orders.

The acquisition of ISS by IBM has reflected this phenomenon.  By this business adjustment, they grow revenue from more strategic customers and main stream products, leaving more space at sub market that is more creative and higher risk, e.g. vulnerability assessment, pen test, botnet and etc.

The merger of Symantec and Veritas weakened the voice and momentum of Symantec at security management areas, instead, they opt to bigger data center and storage market. This also brings opportutnies to McAfee, TrendMicro, Kaspersky, Sophos, etc.

Talking back to this acquisition, HP will compete against Cisco and Huawei at enterprise networking market. Those two companies are also stronger players at security appliance market. Huawei is also promoting its server and storage product lines.

The industry is becoming more and more oligopoly.  Giant IT vendors grow one stop with almost full-coverage product line, trying to control IT systems and money of existing customers. Cloud computing will increase this trend.