Both WRQ and Attachmate are still in business--the same business (host connectivity), though both have taken the technology on a detour down the Web services lane. Attachmate, in fact, has ventured into EAI, the subject of this issue's cover package (page 30).
Did you ever Rumba with Wall Data? That host connectivity company is now in the belly of NetManage, which used to sell a TCP/IP stack and application suite, and eventually purchased its competitor, FTP Software, in 1998. So TCP/IP products are out, but 3270 is still in. Has anyone heard lately from Rabbit (3270 gateways), Wollongong (one of the few vendors that offered multiplatform TCP/IP) or TGV ("three guys and a VAX")?
FutureSoft made DynaComm, host connectivity software, and is still in business. It also now makes e-mail and Internet filtering technology. Hummingbird was the premier provider of X Windows and still sells Exceed, NFS Maestro and Host Explorer. But the company now sells "enterprise information management systems" (business intelligence and knowledge management). X, BI and KM: I'm sure there's a pattern there.
The old SMC, based in Hauppauge, N.Y., made NICs (remember National Semiconductor's NE2000 chip?), hubs and switches before buying Western Digital (based in Irvine, Calif.) so it could make its own chips. In 1997, SMC sold its systems business to Accton (Taiwan). SMC (still in New York, but now solely in the chip business) still owns 20 percent of the new SMC Networks, which continues to make everything from NICs to Layer 3 switches to wireless technology in Irvine. It's even retained the Tiger switch brand name.
Asanté is also still in business, selling everything from switches to wireless technology. We once wrote a song parody about that company, sung to the tune of "The Slinky Song" and performed at our annual awards show. It went something like this.
Verse:
It's a funny little box,
It's as heavy as rocks,
It won't do SNMP.
It drops packets like rain,
Management's a pain,
Its manuals were printed in Tempe.
Chorus:
Asanté, Asanté, it's little, it's light, it's gray.
Asanté, Asanté, it runs for at least a day ...
It runs for at least a day.
We didn't mean it, of course. The words just fit the tune. But boy were they mad.
We first wrote about the Wheel Group in 1996 (yes, 1996!) in a cover story on vulnerability assessment.
A bunch of ex-Air Force security geeks had an amazing product and consultancy, which Cisco gobbled up, spurring the behemoth into the security market and still serving as the basis for some Cisco technology. Meanwhile, some members of the Wheel Group started SecureLogix, the recipient of our 2003 Product of the Year award.
The CEO of a new vulnerability-assessment vendor, Qualys (reported on in our June 26 cover story), is Philippe Courtot. You may remember him as founder of the world's best-ever e-mail product, cc:Mail, which I used when I worked at Lockheed Martin, known then as Martin Marietta.
Today, though, as a tribute to legacy vendors, I'm deciding between PROFS and All-in-One.
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--Fritz Nelson, fnelson@nwc.com.
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