Tumbleweed Communications

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article or section is written like an advertisement.
Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view.
Mark blatant advertising which would require a fundamental rewrite in order to become encyclopedic for speedy deletion, using {{db-spam}}. (February 2008)
The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia.
Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.(February 2008)
Tumbleweed Communications Corp.
Type Publicly traded
Founded 1993
Headquarters Redwood City, California
Industry security solutions for internet commerce
Revenue US $60M (2006)
Website Tumbleweed

Tumbleweed Communications Corp. provides messaging security solutions for enterprise and government customers. [1]. Tumbleweed products are used to block security threats, protect information, and conduct business online. Tumbleweed provides solutions for inbound and outbound email protection, secure file routing, and identity validation that allow organizations to conduct business over the Internet. Tumbleweed offers these solutions in three product suites: MailGate, SecureTransport, and Validation Authority. MailGate provides protection against spam, viruses, and attacks, and enables policy-based message filtering, encryption, and routing. SecureTransport enables customers to safely exchange large files and transactions without proprietary software. Validation Authority determines the validity of digital certificates. Validation Authority has been used by a majority of government entities, including the United States Marine Corps and the United States Air Force.

Tumbleweed has approximately 2,300 enterprise and government customers. Their traditional market focus has been in the financial services, health care, and government markets.

Contents

[edit] Revenue

In 2005, Tumbleweed earned approximately $US 50 million in gross revenue from the sale of their products and services. Of that, approximately $US 3 million was from licensing their patents.[2]
In 2006, Tumbleweed reported $US 62 million in revenue, with revenue growth over one year of 24%.[3]

[edit] Awards

In January of 2007, Tumbleweed's MailGate 5550 was named SC magazine’s Best of 2006 "Recommended" award in the Anti-Spam category.[4]

[edit] Patents

Tumbleweed has a patent portfolio covering their innovations, namely 22 issued US utility patents[5] and one issued US design patent.

US patent 6192407 is one of several owned by Tumbleweed that relates to document delivery systems that generate a unique URL for intended recipients of a document in order to deliver that document. Tumbleweed has licensed this and related patents in their patent portfolio to 29 companies.[6] They have also had to file several patent infringement lawsuits in an attempt to get those that have used this technology without a license to pay at least a reasonable royalty in order to continue to use it. Those that have been sued include:

  • PayPal,[7] This suit has been settled. Terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.
  • Hallmark Cards,[8] This suit has been settled. Hallmark agreed to take a license.
  • Yahoo! and HSBC Bank USA,[9] This suit has been settled. The terms have been described by Yahoo! and HSBC lawyers as favorable to Yahoo! and HSBC.
  • DST Systems and NewRiver[10] This suit has been settled. DST Systems and NewRiver will pay Tumbleweed four cents for each delivery of electronic information using a personalized, trackable URL.

Overall, Tumbleweed earns about 6% of its revenue from patent licensing.

[edit] Competitors

Major competitors of Tumbleweed include[11]:

[edit] Representative Customers

[edit] Industry Articles

  • 1.5 Million email addresses exposed [1]
  • Sensitive Military Documents left unprotected online [2]
  • 42,000 Pfizer employees exposed to risk of identity theft [3]
  • 45.7 million credit card numbers stolen from TJX's Wireless LAN [4]
  • Monster.com Security breach [5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Tumbleweed SEC 10Q filing, For the quarterly period ended September 30, 2006, US government publication
  2. ^ Tumbleweed 2005 10k SEC form
  3. ^ Tumbleweed Communications Corp. Company Profile. Retrieved on 2008-03-21.
  4. ^ Tumbleweed named in SC Magazine best of 2006 Award, Tumbleweed Press Release January 10, 2007
  5. ^ List of US patents issued to Tumbleweed
  6. ^ Tumbleweed patent licensees
  7. ^ eBay, Tumbleweed settle patent suit
  8. ^ Hallmark Settles Online Greeting Card Lawsuit
  9. ^ Morrison and Foerster
  10. ^ Tumbleweed Settles URL Lawsuit
  11. ^ Hoovers Inc. profile of Tumbleweed Communications March 12, 2007

[edit] See also

[edit] External links