If Rohati is King Arthur, what does that make Stiennon ...

Sir Lancelot or Guinevere? Hey don't laugh it could happen to you. In the meantime what has Richard so hot and bothered that he is subscribing mythical qualities to Rohati?  It seems they are using a layer 4 to 7 firewall to control access to applications. They call it network based entitlement control.  I wonder how they stack up to Palo Alto Networks and some of the other next gen application aware, access control firewall products.  From what I understand Nevis Networks and ConSentry can do similar things with the firewalls in their secure switches.

Nevertheless Rohati has gotten some good press, albeit with most coverage carping on the fact that they are founded by former Cisco employees (there are enough former Cisco employees to found many companies I would think). I do think that application aware access control is of tremendous value and this technology will find its way into many technologies. It is a logical extension of identity based access control. 

As usual though Richard can't resist taking a few cheap shots at NAC vendors.  In Richards idyllic view of Camelot, somehow performing pre-connect health or integrity tests is the devils own work.  Richard will just admit that these tests have value and people want them.  They do not preclude doing the rest of the job of access control that Richard seems to approve of though.  Alas, Richard and I have danced this dance before though and I am not going to get into the why it is important.  In fact, here is a new tact for you Richard, it is not important. If you are not going to be convinced, forget about them.  Look beyond admission control tests at what NAC vendors offer around access control and you may find similar type of technology to Rohati in the near future. 

Until than though Richard let me paraphrase Merlin from the movie Camelot "Never be too disturbed if you don't understand what a former analyst is thinking. They don't do it very often".