Well, it seems that many things in life come in streaks. And press coverage is one of the leaders of that pack.

So, in the space of a week or so, we have my conversation on CNET and a clueful article on GigaOm (written by a VC, no less! ).

The former provides an update on how Untangle is doing, and why we’re doing it. The latter article, which reflects on strategies such as ours, explains why the small business’ market is so important to would-be IT vendors. If you scroll down a bit or click here, you can see my comment on the matter.

We at UT think that we are serving a vital role by providing great software at fair prices to small business. We are growing well with this focus. And, later this summer, we’ll be releasing a cool product that should (at least) triple the adoption of our software. Stay tuned….

- Bob

Written by Bob Walters

Our web content filtering (WCF) applications, Web Filter and eSoft Web Filter, are among our most popular offerings.

This demand is well-founded, as such practices have been shown to increase both productivity and regulatory compliance.

But there comes a point where the products can be abused, and a far point where they signal something even worse.

Rest assured, we are troubled by the recent news from China - that all computers must ship with state-controlled WCF in place. That alone is alarming.

When coupled with allegations of its uses, to squash all news of the Dalai Lama and Falun Gong movement, the new use of filtering becomes downright chilling.

WCF isn’t the first of mankind’s tools to be re-purposed with ignoble intent; it’s simply the latest.

Written by Bob Walters

We are pleased to announce that Untangle 6.2 is now available for download.  Highlights of the release are our new multiWAN services: WAN Balancer and WAN Failover. Also included in this release is Ad Blocker, for filtering out banner advertisements.

	WAN Balancer WAN Balancer allows companies to easily split traffic across up to six separate Internet connections. The traffic is spread based on user-specified weightings, ensuring less contention and higher performance. Companies can also save money with WAN Balancer by eliminating an expensive T1 connection in favor of multiple and redundant Cable and DSL links.
	WAN Failover WAN Failover allows companies to prevent network downtime caused by their Internet Service Provider (ISP). The application detects if a company’s primary Internet link goes down and switches traffic to a backup connection automatically. When used with WAN Balancer, WAN Failover detects downtime and reroutes traffic to the remaining Internet links.

Written by Mark Floisand

We now have  over one million users protected by Untangle network gateways. This is a major milestone; in under two years our user base has grown from 9,000 in early 2007, to over 1 million. A new installation of Untangle goes into production every four minutes, at sites spanning the globe.  Despite a tough market, our customer and community base has continued to expand. Our core value proposition of a free, open-source-based network gateway, supplemented with premium applications and services, seems to be just right in this economic climate. Thank you, everyone, for helping us to this milestone.

Untangle provides a free open-source Internet gateway at http://www.untangle.com/Open-Source-Package. Tell your friends.

Written by Mark Floisand

In today’s world, getting a blog up-and-running on the internet is pretty easy - for a geek! OK, even for a non-geek. There are even a lot of moms blogs. But could my mom do it?

A year ago I’d have said “maybe.” Now it’s “absolutely.”

Why? What changed?

In today’s enlightened internet world, if you can email you can blog!

The way to start is Posterous. Just follow the instructions. Don’t worry about doing anything wrong - it can all be fixed later. I created and posted to “Post-Untangle” in about a minute. Nothing is faster.

I know that some of our customers and partners want to blog. The bar has now been lowered…go for it!
[Neither I nor Untangle has any ties to Posterous - it’s just cool and useful tech.]

Written by Bob Walters

Many small and home-based businesses depend on the Internet for their livelihood. However, few regions or cities are blessed with 100% uptime from their Internet Service Provider (ISP), so are compelled to have a second (or third) ISP as backup. If this rings true for you, then you may be interested in two new services Untangle is just rolling out: WAN Failover and WAN Balancer. WAN Failover enables Untangle to automatically switch over to that backup ISP when the main ISP service goes down, minimizing your downtime. WAN Balancer allows both ISP lines to be utilised, not just as a single primary connection and backup; that way, you’re not just paying for that second ISP as insurance, but actively using it every day, too. For more info, consider registering for the Webinar on Thursday May 28th.

Written by Mark Floisand

The internet has been abuzz with proclamations and conversations about the imminent demise of venture capital (VC). The clamor began to escalate late last year, and has been building throughout this year. Much of the problem has been the result of a perfect storm of causal factors, among them:

• The economy. Duh. The effects of the downturn hurt from many directions:
• Sales in VC-backed companies are down, dragging valuations and extending timelines
• LP’s (the “big guys” who invest in VC) are feeling the crunch - less of their money is available
• The big wins that characterized the late ’90’s are falling out of the 10-year accounting window commonly used as a scorecard for VC performance (this is a “Y2K-level” event for VC).
• Acquiring companies are strained for cash, and their own equity is devalued
• Scalability Limits. There’s just too much money chasing too few high-growth deals (for a particularly interesting view of this, see Fred Wilson’s article and its comments)
• Regulations. Laws like SARBOX raise the bar for IPO’s to historic levels
• More…

But we entrepreneurs share some of the “blame” as well - the scale of innovation in relatively mature segments like “IT,” “biotech,” and (even) “the Internet” has slowed. That’s on us, perhaps, or perhaps it’s just the reality of maturing markets. By the way, notice that I said “scale” of innovation, not “level” of innovation. Innovation is alive and well. It just has less purchase in the market - too much has come before it.

So now the “punch line”: How much should we worry? Will there be money to fund our next deals, to create the next Untangle?

Here’s my own personal opinion, embodied in my predictions:

• The availability of VC funding in IT has peaked. It’ll never be the same, at least not unless some unforeseen  “discontinuous innovation” occurs.
• The VC class will survive, and even thrive - but there will be fewer players. The top quartile of VC’s provide excellent return for LP’s. The bottom quartile does not. Guess what’s going to happen?
• Worthy deals (and entrepreneurs) will get funded. Marginal deals will not.
• A new class of high-tech entrepreneurship will evolve, one far less dependent on VC’s. This is already happening, primarily in web deals. This back-to-the-future class will resemble Silicon Valley startups like privately-held Monster Cable (profiled in this CNN/Money article).

So I’m not worried about funding the next “Untangle.” Which is good, as I have plenty to occupy me with this one!

Written by Bob Walters

OK, I admit it. I was totally drawn in by the provocative title of James Governor’s post. It was that “pathology” word that got me. According to Meriam-Webster:

pathology

Function:

noun

Inflected Form(s):

plural pa·thol·o·gies

Etymology:

New Latin pathologia & Middle French pathologie, from Greek pathologia study of the emotions, from path- + -logia -logy

1: the study of the essential nature of diseases and especially of the structural and functional changes produced by them  2: something abnormal: a: the structural and functional deviations from the normal that constitute disease or characterize a particular disease b: deviation from propriety or from an assumed normal state of something nonliving or nonmaterial   3: deviation giving rise to social ills pathologies…and crime

Well, it’s easy to see that I could have a load of fun with these! After all, I have a decades-long history of the gladiatorial combats that James and the linked material describes. That notwithstanding, a major point made in the article(s) centers on the inequity of the perpetual license model (sometimes incorrectly called the ‘enterprise license’ model). Presumably, the answer is software-as-a-service (SaaS) and its pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Let’s take a look at each pricing strategy, and the benefits and drawbacks of each…

Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Bob Walters

Commtouch have released their Q1 Internet Threats Trend Report. They report that over 15 million computers were infected with three variations of the Conficker virus, to create a massive zombie botnet, since appearing on the scene in November 2008. The botnet lay dormant for weeks, then shortly before their report came out, began to send spam. Given the scale of the botnet, its impact on spam rates in Q2 is likely to be severe - already at 76% in Q1. Boost your spam protection now.

Written by Mark Floisand

The San Jose City Council is voting tonight on whether to put porn filters on public library computers, an issue first broached a decade ago. At stake is the demand from the public for library resources to be family-safe, versus the cost of installing web filtering systems to block porn. ABC7 covers the story here. The City is looking at a potential investment of $150,000 to solve the problem. However, we at Untangle have a free Open Source web filter, and a premium-priced filter from eSoft, that would cover it at a fraction of the price.

Opponents to the filters have also cited freedom of speech as a reason to continue to allow open access in public libraries. However, I’ve yet to visit a library that had Playboy or Hustler on their shelves; why should their computers be any different? We’d welcome the opportunity to work with public libraries on installing web filters well under the budgets they are debating.

Written by Mark Floisand