Commentary

Andrew Conry Murray
 

The Startup Makeover?

NAC vendor Vernier Networks is apparently reinventing itself as a startup, despite being founded almost seven years ago. The company will rename itself Autonomic Networks and brand itself a Series A startup. It's an odd strategy, given that the company already has raised at least $35 million through A, B, and C funding rounds.

NAC vendor Vernier Networks is apparently reinventing itself as a startup, despite being founded almost seven years ago. The company will rename itself Autonomic Networks and brand itself a Series A startup. It's an odd strategy, given that the company already has raised at least $35 million through A, B, and C funding rounds.Neither Vernier nor Autonomic Networks mention the relationship between the two companies on their sites. Sources confirm the name change, and say Vernier will make a formal announcement in the first quarter of this year.

The Autonomic Network Web site includes headings for Management, Board and Investors, but doesn't say who they are. The site only offers generalized descriptions that tout the awesomeness of these mysterious figures.


More SMB Insights

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Webcasts

More >>

As for technology, the site is equally vague. The home page says the technology will secure companies by "..automatically learning, auditing, and controlling user access to sensitive data, applications, and other assets on an enterprise network. Patent-pending risk-weighted clustering and profiling technologies automatically pinpoint the few significant incidents that require action from the multitude of questionable events that occur daily in a dynamic business environment."

Given that Vernier is a NAC company, it sounds like it is adding permissions management and stirring in a bit of event/information management.

But why make such a clean break? Does Vernier hope the cachet of a startup, the aura of innovation and potential, might attract more investors and customers?

Or perhaps the company wants to disassociate itself from the NAC market? If so, is it really fair to relaunch as a startup if you're building on an existing technology platform?

Previous investors include Allegis Capital, DCM, Foundation Capital, UV Partners, Packet Design, Masthead Ventures, FT Ventures, Weber Capital, and Venrock Associates.


Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
T-Shirt Giveaway T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting!
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links