BOB's under attack

Microsofts announcment of the expanded relationship with Citrix is very interesting. They together will jointly develop and market a Citrix-branded branch office box (BOB).

The quotes from Gartner are very telling about this convergence of networking and security. The competition and overlap of markets continues to heat up.

"Cisco and Microsoft have avoided direct competition until recently, but the merging of networking, security, storage and applications made this confrontation inevitable.

"Microsoft is launching new networking capabilities within Vista and the 'Longhorn' version of Windows Server, and is pursuing partners in the voice arena, for example Nortel."

If BOB is a new term to you, BOBs commonly consist of a mix of some of the following components all on a single appliance or platform:
* multi-function router
* WAN/networking acceleration
* firewall
* VPN
* VoIP/SIP gateway
* email
* printing
* file serving and caching
* IDS/IPS
* DNS
* DHCP

The Microsoft/Citrix BOB plans to deliver Windows Server 2003 Release 2 and Microsoft's Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) server on Citrix's WANScaler WAN optimization hardware. The box will be sold under the Citrix brand but Microsoft is commiting marketing dollars to the product. (Understandable given Microsoft's software is on it.) Product is slated for late 2007 so we'll have to wait and see what pricing and product models will be introduced.

Citrix has a very loyal following in the mid and enterprise market, with good acceleration technology for remote offices. If the Microsoft software on a Citrix platform can deliver lower cost remote management, they together stand a chance at a run at Cisco's market.