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Citrix Picks Up Teros: Page 2 of 3

That's a pretty open-ended plan, but at least Citrix is committing to the integration. Increasingly, users like Beasley are looking to consolidate the number of devices they use in their data centers -- hence vendors’ efforts to offer all-in-one combos that can do a number of different things.

For his part, Beasley says he currently uses technology from F5 Networks for load balancing, although he may reconsider this post acquisition. “If load balancing were to be included in that Teros appliance, we would look to remove F5 from our environment,” he says.

Teros is one of a number of startups, including NetContinuum and Imperva, that specialize in protecting applications by checking TCP sessions before they reach the application. This technique is important because many applications were written before current security threats emerged, making them particularly vulnerable to attack from hackers. In a worst-case scenario, weak spots could open firms up to identity theft or the loss of complete datasets.

For some time, there has been speculation that these firms are ripe for acquisition, and there has already been some activity in the space. (See App Security Could Help Firewalls.) Earlier this year, for example, F5 snapped up the assets and intellectual property of Watchfire Corp.’s AppShield Web application security firewall. This followed last year’s acquisition of another application security specialist, MagniFire Websystems. (See F5 Acquires MagniFire.)

For its part, F5 has already made moves to integrate its technologies. For example, the vendor recently combined its application firewall, TrafficShield, with its BIG-IP load balancer. (See F5 Unveils BIG-IP .) Erik Giesa, F5’s vice president of product management, tells Byte and Switch that using F5’s underlying TMOS architecture, work is also underway to integrate its SSL VPN offerings and the wide-area network (WAN) optimization products it acquired when it bought Swan Labs earlier this year. (See F5 Completes Swan Buy and F5 Snaps Up Swan Labs.)