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GCN Home > 05/2/05 issue

GCN INSIDER: Trends and technologies that affect the way government does IT

By Brad Grimes, GCN Staff

Executives from Tumbleweed Communications Corp. stress the company was founded before the dot-com boom and continues to thrive after the bust. No argument here, but a GCN editor who recently met with the Redwood City, Calif., company prefers to romanticize about its dot-com-like name and history of launching from a founder’s home.

But the fact is Tumbleweed is aggressively expanding its horizons, including the recent formation of a government solutions team to push its secure Internet messaging products. The company currently has 2 million software seats in the federal government, according to Ann Smith, Tumbleweed’s vice president of federal sales.

Tumbleweed’s Validation Authority software handles public-key infrastructure and identity validation using the Online Certificate Status Protocol. (“PKI envy is brewing in the commercial sector,” said CTO John Thielens, because the federal government, particularly the Defense Department, has such a robust program.) The company is currently working with General Dynamics to incorporate its OCSP technology at the Defense Information Systems Agency after the integrator tested 11 OCSP products.

Tumbleweed’s MailGate sniffs outbound e-mail at the gateway and reroutes sensitive documents to an encrypted channel, while SecureTransport allows for en- crypted file transfers. Smith admitted the SecureTransport product hasn’t gained as much traction in government as the company would like (although more than a dozen agency customers seem like a pretty good start). The Patent and Trademark Office now uses SecureTransport to move data in lieu of tapes on trucks.

FOSE meets the Far East

Was anyone else impressed with the smallish Korea pavilion at last month’s FOSE trade show? One GCN editor who spent a good chunk of time there counted more than a dozen tech companies showing everything from security solutions (many security solutions) to bright, high-end displays.

Seoul Standard Co. Ltd. had a nice military-grade rugged notebook that meets military specifications. It’s always good to have more options in the growing rugged notebooks market. But more interesting were FOMGuard Inc.’s optic sensor fence and Meet Co. Ltd.’s MetalCell batteries.

More news on related topics: Enterprise Architecture, IT Infrastructure



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