By John E. Burke, Principal Research Analyst, February 15, 2007.

Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) this week announced that it would cease development on its desktop network access control (NAC) agent, called the Cisco Trust Agent (CTA) and spin it off as an open-source project. Cisco's decision highlights Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) growing maturity in providing core desktop security.

Cisco's action is an admission that Microsoft's Network Access Protection (NAP) agent can satisfy enterprise demands well enough that CTA is no longer a viable (profitable) offering. Fewer organizations will need CTA since Microsoft and Cisco agreed last September to have the NAP agent be Cisco's NAC agent for Vista and what follows, and since Microsoft boosted the features for XP's NAP agents, as well. By throwing the code open, Cisco gets out of the business of maintaining CTA for non-Windows systems and unsupported Windows versions, and can shift its attention elsewhere.

Where it is shifting that attention is up-stack, to the Cisco Security Agent (CSA), intended to use role-based access rules to enforce data security policies across multiple communications channels. Cisco may be setting up for a replay of CTA's denouement, unless it is getting out far enough ahead of Microsoft and others on this subject. Given the number of "plug-your-data-leak" vendors visible at RSA last week, that's questionable.

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