This has been the month of big companies announcing mutual development and/or marketing partnerships. A few weeks ago Citrix and Microsoft announced intention to enhance performance for application delivery to remote and branch offices. Last week Cisco and Microsoft rolled out the big guns to show commitment to NAC-NAP interoperability -- they kind of looked like a couple of kids forced to smile for the family portrait. This week has Juniper and Symantec rolling out their CEOs to tell us that together they will deliver insanely wonderful perimeter defense UTMs.

There are some tactical things that are nice, but really to me this is a pretty uninspiring announcement. Symantec gets to sell network AV through Juniper, Juniper gets desktop real estate to pump 802.1x supplicants for its switches and access points, and both companies can make noise that they are collaborating on NAC solutions through the TCG.