Cisco's developing a next generation firewall (NGFW)
"Gartner believes Cisco has had a significant effort under way to develop an NGFW product (and accompanying appliances) as a successor to the Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firewall."
Interestingly, Gartner's most recent Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls revealed:
"The enterprise network firewall market is undergoing a period dynamic evolution, as effective next-generation firewalls are now increasingly necessary. Vendors that have addressed advanced targeted threats have seen gains in the market."
According to the SEC filing (page 46), over the six months ending January 31, 2012 next generation firewall (NGFW) vendor Palo Alto's revenues skyrocketed +141% year-over-year while earning a robust gross margin of 73.3%.
By comparison, for the six months ending January 28, 2012 (page 37) Cisco's gross margin was only 61.3% on a revenue increase of a mere +7.7% year-over-year.
"The ASA line is becoming somewhat dated, although Gartner expects Cisco to ship new models and software in 2012. Cisco has continued to consolidate its security products into a single business unit, and Gartner believes Cisco has had a significant effort under way to develop an NGFW product (and accompanying appliances) as a successor to the Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firewall."
