The 451 Group has a blog entry on the Barracuda's purchase of Purewire. I am currently evaluating Purewire. This article had some tidbits I hadn't seen in other analysis.
I had noted that the Security as a Service webspace was getting a bit crowded. ScanSafe as this article notes is the granddaddy of them all. Anyone who uses MessageLabs for email should be checking them out. Webroot has an offering. ZScaler and Purewire are two names I'd come across this year. While it appeared a bit like Purewire latched onto the first warm body they could find, selling early does make sure you aren't left standing alone at the end of the night.
The 451 Group makes an interesting comment that perhaps BlueCoat would have been a better fit. That would have been very interesting to me. I'm not such a big fan of Barracuda. Venders with radio ads are not targeting infosec people like me. That didn't turn me off on them so much as the Backscatter they've caused with their (previous) default settings.
451 says Purewire has 200 customers. That is beyond small. Larger companies see a lot of web traffic. Even if something were going to escape detection, odds are good that they would be reported by another company first and protection added. Hopefully Barracuda will add more viability than Purewire has currently
451 stated "bake-offs are the exception rather than the rule" in web security. I find that kind of hard to believe. As critical as web traffic is people dont look at multiple venders? Its so easy to set up an eval.
Ultimately my evalutaion of this purchase is "at least its not CA."
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