Serial Entrepreneur: Taher Elgamal (Part 13)
Check other articles in the series...To conclude our interview, we discuss current events in the marketplace as well as the current and future expectations of Tumbleweed.
SM: Why Tumbleweed at this stage of the game? TE: I love the consulting lifestyle because I can work with so many companies at a time. It is very entertaining, but you never actually build something. In the back of my mind the question is always there: can I build a company again? The only space in security which is big that has not been filled yet is the date security space, and it is very fragmented right now.
SM: Security has become largely a niche market with a lot of niche products by niche companies, and they just end up getting acquired. TE: That is right. Think, however, of a company like Check Point. It is a large company, they grew up on firewalls, so there is reason to believe there is space for one or two companies that will grow and become very large security companies. Somebody can buy Check Point tomorrow, business is what it is, ofcourse.
SM: What do you think will happen to Symantec or McAfee – will they make it as independent companies? TE: I have friends in both companies. I think there are tracks which companies can pursue to become larger. The issue, depending on desktop security, is that you are always fighting Microsoft off. That is a very hard fight. Desktop security is a tough place. Infrastructure security is a completely different thing.
SM: If you are not fighting Microsoft, then you are fighting Cisco. That is an equally big threat. TE: Cisco does something completely different. They have their own infrastructure, and they are very unlikely to go to email administration and group policy products and start selling a complete suite of products. There are a number of things which must be done to connect all of the pieces. There are services, products, and it is just not a Cisco environment.
If you look at the problems as a content centered problem, rather than an infrastructure problem, then you could also look at Oracle. They care about data. A lot of people use the Oracle database, so you could argue that Oracle will get into that space. Content right now, however, is not part of any of these systems … it is in its own ecosystem out there. This could remain a space that lives in between all of these players. When you grow a company to be the size of Symantec, it is a different issue. Purchases at that level are simply industry consolidation. But at Tumbleweed, we still have a long way to go before we reach that scale or status.
SM: Taher, thanks for sharing your industry perspective with us. I find it very helpful to understand the segments and the dynamics. And your personal story is fascinating!
This segment is part 13 in a 13 part series
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