Interesting time last week at the RSA show in SF. Industry is definitely feeling the effects of the economy as overall attendance seemed down quite a bit. The show organizers were putting on a game face and saying registrations were down less than 10% but that doesn’t count the no shows who got their travel budgets cut - my guess is more like down 25%+. Having said that, the customers who were at the show were very serious - if they were going to travel they were intent on scoping out solutions. To me, two clear takeaways - First, “solutions” are the key. Customers and potential alliance partners were definitely looking for solutions that enabled simplified operations and cost reductions - the appetite for complex, custom implementations seems to be at an all time low. Second, security is becoming a mainstream data warehousing market. More data, more sources, more complex analysis. All this adds up to a trend toward massive, centralized security data warehouses - in the proverbial “cloud” and in the customer data center.

One thing that didn’t change at RSA this year is that it continued to be an excellent forum for customers, partners and even competitors to meet and exchange ideas. I spent most of 3 days on the show floor and don’t think I had more than a few minutes over that entire time where I wasn’t engaged in productive dialog.

There was one very unusual “curveball” at the show this year - the weather. In the the 20+ years I’ve called San Francisco home, I can’t remember warmer April nights. San Franciscans love to show off our city and this year the weather cooperated. For 48 hours, we channeled San Diego weather. Too bad my Giants haven’t enjoyed the same hot spring season.

Thanks to all our customers and partners for their attendance at the show and for their continued interest and support of us.

Jim

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