Strata Guard Free VMWare for Windows

Back in January I wrote about our release of Strata Guard Free, a freeware version of our IDS/IPS. Then in March, I wrote about our release of a VMWare version of Strata Guard Free for Linux. That  VMWare release led to thousands of downloads of the product and we have had great feedback and user experience with the product.  Now we have announced that we have released a VMWare version of Strata Guard Free that runs on Windows.  I think this will probably lead to a another big uptick in downloads.  Amazing how successful this has been.

Mike Rothman in his Daily Incite makes a good point about the VMWare stuff.  Besides people using it for their permanent IPS, it also makes it so much easier to test the product and then buy the commercial product. So the virtual version makes a great upsell to the full version.  This is exactly what we are seeing.  So many customers contact us to buy Strata Guard and when we go to set up demos or evals, they tell us no need, they have been using Strata Guard Free for some time.  It shortens our sales cycle drastically.  This really has been a happy but unanticipated side effect.