Cisco isn't such a big threat in the VPN world, but Nokia, Siemens and Alcatel are. Customers are throwing money at VPN vendors, but most start-ups still aren't in the black. These were some of the insights from our guests at Network World's second such gathering of VPN executives. Treat the execs to food and drinks at the bustling Veni, Vidi, Vici bistro, turn on the tape recorder and let them go at each other. The IPSec standard isn't stable enough yet to expect interoperability, he said.
Interoperability exists today to some limited extent.
We interoperate with Cisco, TimeStep, Radguard and Check Point. Thomas said individual corporations can live without interoperability because they can just buy one vendor's gear. But when it comes to extending a VPN to communicate with business partners, customers need interoperability, he said. Everyone wants to give everyone else access to their data - their suppliers, their customers. So you have to move to interoperability very quickly for the VPN market to achieve its true potential.