They don’t even have a hardware flexibility as they again wrongly claim…Look at their SG103 and SG203 series…Does that mean since the lower their models does not have enough resources to host all the blade features, an SMB customer who doesn’t have big chunk of dollors to shell out should live with critical protection….Guys…look around and see how the competitors work…Couple of the so called UTM leaders delivers everything ..every single feature they release on their smallest box possible..SO what hardware flexibility are we talking here…??

Now look at their list of Security Gateway Software blades…Tell me one feature which has not be there with them or their competitors…I would still bid on the Security Management Software blades…I would be a honest person to call them as ‘Product Enhancements’..!!

With the acquisition of Nokia Appliances Business, they probably wanna sell more appliances looking at the lucrative revenue it can bring..!!Nothing wrong with it…But I am skeptical about “Guaranteed performance – Enables provisioning of resources that guarantee service levels” when it comes to open and VMWare platform though you can allocate resources.

The cut it short…Its nothing but the same glorified UTM stuff..with the more granular control and management which is there already with few of the reputed product in terms of granular role based models.

From a partner precective is lesser the number of part numbers in BoQ, it makes much easier….regardless of the deal size..I would attribute that aspect as one of the key reasons for the success of the leading UTM vendor…!!

Lastly, the era of hiring expensive CP certified specialist gone…!! Companies would invest that amount to get one Firewall knowledgeable Security Admin and IS Auditor for that cost.. Benefit is double fold guys…!! And that attributes why one of the world biggest Routing/Switching companies UTM enhancement of the older legacy product still didn’t pick up the way expect…Its a nightmare to manage…so is CP..

Cheers…!!

http://media.checkpoint.com/flash/software-blades-demo/index.html

For anyone that was really curious about the blade architecture…

CP does not win new business anyway, they consistently lose POC’s to other players, more than 50% of revenues are subscription and support, the rest is current customer expansion and end-point, almost no new customers.

It is really sad, because CP could have been so much more successful, with all the talent it had, and the great market position at the end of the millennium.

I would expect that a person of your intellect would not base his judgement solely on a press release. It seems that you have formed an opinion based on minimal information, and bitterness towards your former employer.

Israeli Companies, and Check Point in particular, guard their information and product roadmaps very carefully. You should know this as well as anyone.

I am a current Check Point employee, and having taken the time to truly understand
the Software Blade architecture, I believe that it is revolutionary in the flexibility it provides our customer. If you were to look at the pricing associated with this architecture, it is quite easy to see that under this architecture, this will actually lower the cost to our customers.

Once the true nature of the Software Blade Architecture and other upcoming announcements have been made, I am confident that the security Industry will understand the true nature of Check Points direction. Innovation is still the primary focus at Check Point, and if you actually took the time to read more than a press release, you could actually provide an informed Opinion.

The screenshot that one poster points to as having the “Firewall” grayed out, is nothing more than a screenshot of a single appliance, which includes the firewall blade. This is not a requirement when purchasing an appliance, and appliances can absolutely be purchased with only the functionality that a customer wants.

Software Blades are portable from appliance to appliance, allowing for the simple repurposing of your existing hardware.

Do you have an appliance you no longer need. Well, take the “Software Blades” from that appliance and move them to a different appliance, or distribute them amongst many of your other appliances.

Are you running an SSL blade on all your perimeter Gateways. Would you rather move to an SSL only Appliance. Simply move the SSL Software Blade from each perimeter gateway to a single appliance, and VOILA you have an SSL Concentrator.

It is sad that a person of your intellect does not have enough common sense to really educate yourself on the offering of a Company you hope to compete against.

I look forward to any comments you may have.

The real pity is that there are a few really interesting things hidden in there – the new IPS engine is interesting, and the retooling of the inspection mechanism to improve efficiency has potential. So why promote the product based on the weakest area in Check Point’s portfolio, it’s licensing? As a veteran of Check Point, I’m also depressed about this…

If you look at the picture closely,
http://www.checkpoint.com/products/softwareblades/architecture/index.html
you will see the firewall is gray out. You can’t buy the others without a firewall.

CP can just give you all the blades then provide a enable/disable button for you to chose. This is what UTM vendor does. You can have protection profile with different feature turned on.

licensing it is.