I have always loved sports. Playing that is, not so much as a fan. If we worked together then you know that I can not make it through a single day without a baseball metaphor or two. One of the things I enjoyed most about sports is the bonds that can form between the fiercest of competitors; the esprit-de-corps that is cemented through collective knowledge, shared experience, and the mutual respect that grows as we learn more about each other and ourselves. The same can hold true in our professional endeavors as well.
As you may know, we have recently announced the acquisition of Secure Software Inc. of McLean Virginia (www.securesoftware.com). What most people don't know is that we had actually contemplated putting these companies together in the past. When both companies were in their early infancy the founders of Secure and Fortify met and shared our respective visions for the security market and how best to solve the challenges faced protecting software applications. In the end, we agreed that the timing wasn't right for such a move. However, from those initial meetings, I had come away with a very positive opinion of Kevin, John, Pravir and the rest of the Secure team.
While we competed fiercely for several years, I always admired Secure and the team there that gave us some of the most intense competition Fortify has ever faced. They won their deals on expertise and hard work and they made major contributions to the field of Software Security - ones that will carry on as we integrate the best ideas of both firms.
We will leverage the work Secure has done in building tight integration between source code analysis and the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform 7.0. We will also vigorously support the groundbreaking work by John and Pravir in developing CLASP (www.securesoftware.com/process/) and driving it as a standard through OWASP (www.owasp.org). There is a lot to do, but of course our first priority will be supporting their blue-chip customer base and welcoming the Secure team members that transition over to Fortify. I can't say that I have the same level of admiration for all of my competitors, but you can bet that we will be working hard to make sure the best of them end up here at Fortify too.
