7/30/2008 -- Great news for Cisco Systems Inc., which -- thanks to being among the first out of the gate -- has been a prominent player in the network admission control (NAC) segment for years now. According to a new survey from market watcher Infonetics Research, Cisco sits atop the NAC space -- at least according to prospective buyers, who rate Cisco as tops in a number of areas.

The-not-so-good news, on the other hand, is that Cisco doesn't have a heckuva lot of breathing room: According to Infonetics, a number of vendors -- including Microsoft Corp. -- closely match Cisco in several key NAC areas.

The Infonetics study aims to shed some light on how customers view NAC and leading NAC vendors, as well as customer plans -- if any -- to deploy NAC solutions. One surprising upshot of the study is that networking departments -- and not enterprise security departments -- are taking ownership of day-to-day NAC management.

"One of the most interesting findings from our NAC user study is that networking groups are responsible for day-to-day management of NAC at about two-thirds of the medium and large organizations we interviewed," said Jeff Wilson, a principal analyst with Infonetics, in a statement. "NAC is a very unique example of a critical piece of IT infrastructure that is entirely driven by security concerns, but largely managed by networking gurus. Selling NAC solutions requires a certain amount of finesse; vendors need to understand how to appeal to both groups, and most importantly to acknowledge (and handle) the security team's concerns, while ultimately focusing on making a solution that is deployable by a networking professional."

So what's driving the need to NAC? Policy and regulatory compliance, for starters. According to Infonetics, nearly all NAC prospects cite compliance (of one kind or another) as a driving concern.

As mentioned, Cisco received top marks from respondents for its technology, roadmap, security, management, price-to-performance ratio, pricing, financial stability, and service and support. The networking giant was closely matched by many of its competitors, however. Microsoft, for example, not only matched Cisco's score for financial stability, but managed to nearly erase a perceived technology gap (in the minds of respondents), as well.

Cisco archrival Juniper, on the other hand, received top marks for price-to-performance and was a close second to Cisco on the security tip, too. --Stephen Swoyer