Crossbeam Systems

Crossbeam

Type	Private
Industry	Network security
Founded	1999
Headquarters	Boxborough, Massachusetts, United States
Key people	Greg Clark, CEO
Products	X-Series X20 X-Series X30 X-Series X40 X-Series X45 X-Series X50 X-Series X60 X-Series X80
Number of employees	300+
Website	Crossbeam.com

Crossbeam Systems is headquartered in Boxborough, Massachusetts and has offices in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. Crossbeam Systems was acquired by Blue Coat Systems in December 2012 and the Crossbeam brand has been fully absorbed into Blue Coat. The company made open, high-performance hardware and software network security platform that was designed to deploy network security applications from third-party security software vendors (including McAfee, Sourcefire, Trend Micro, Websense, Check Point, IBM, Imperva, Actiance and Sophos) within large networking environments, including enterprises, service providers and government agencies. The industries that Crossbeam serves include energy[1], financial services[2], government, healthcare, higher education [3], managed/ service providers[4] and mobile operators [5]

Company History

Crossbeam Systems was acquired by Blue Coat Systems in December 2012 and the Crossbeam brand has been fully absorbed into Blue Coat.

Crossbeam Systems, Inc. was incorporated on November 23, 1999 by Stephen Justus and Mike Akerman, with Throop Wilder joining as a founding team member in 2000 [6] . Since the beginning, Crossbeam has been focused on designing and manufacturing a range of very high-performance network security platforms, with the philosophy that security solutions should be open and offer choice [7] to the customer in the security applications they use. Today, Crossbeam is the only manufacturer of a dedicated open network security platform. In October 2011, Crossbeam introduced its own blog site dedicated to rethinking networking concepts. RethinkTheNetwork

Peter George led the company from 2001 to June 2007 as CEO and president. Pete Fiore took over the company in 2007 and led the company to growth and profitability until his death in December 2009. Mike Ruffolo joined Crossbeam [8] in March 2010 and continues today as CEO and president.

On November 9, 2012, Crossbeam Systems Inc. was acquired by the private equity firm Thoma Bravo. The company did not publicly disclose the acquisition price or the terms of the deal.

On December 17, 2012, Blue Coat Systems announced that it was acquiring Crossbeam Systems. The deal is expected to close December 31, 2012.

Products

The company’s key innovation is its X-Series network security platform [9], which was introduced in September 2001 as a way for telecommunications operators to consolidate their security server or appliance infrastructure into one chassis, which acts as a virtual security architecture [10] or ‘network in a box.’ The X-Series architecture consists of five major components including a chassis, an operating system and three types of hardware blades or modules:

– Network Processor Module (NPM)
– Control Processor Module (CPM)
– Application Processor Module (APM)

Over the past 11-plus years, the X-Series platform, including the modules and operating systems, have gone through six major generational upgrades. In October 2010, Crossbeam announced the 5th generation upgrade [11] to its X-Series family of network security platforms to include the X20, X30, X60 and X80-S. In October 2011, Crossbeam completed the portfolio with the new X50 enterprise data-center platform [12] and added the 6th generation Network Processor Module; the NPM-9610 and NPM-9650. [13]

As an independent validation of the 6th generation X-Series platform performance, Crossbeam, together with Spirent, European Advanced Network Test Centre (EANTC) and Heavy Reading set out to create a new real-world methodology for testing network security in the GPRS and 4G-LTE mobile operator network. This methodology was then independently tested [14] by EANTC on the Crossbeam X80-S platform.

X-Series Chassis

Chassis Type	Module Slots	Lifecycle
X20	4-Slot	2010–Present
X30	4-Slot	2010–Present
X40	14-Slot	Replaced by X80
X45	7-Slot	Replaced by X60
X50	4-Slot	2011–Present
X60	7-Slot	2010–Present
X80	14-Slot	2001–Present

X-Series Modules

Generation	Network Processor Modules	Application Processor Modules	Control Processor Modules
1st (2001)	NPM 4100	APM 4200	CPM 4100
2nd (2003)	NPM 8100	APM 8200	CPM 8100
3rd (2005)	NPM 8200	APM 8400	CPM 8400
4th (2007)	NPM 8600	APM 8600	CPM 8600
5th (2009)	NPM 8620/50	APM 8650
6th (2010/11)	NPM 9610/50	APM 9600	CPM 9600
7th (2015)	NPM {TBA}	APM X700	CPM X700

X-Series Operating System (XOS)

The component technologies are tied together by a specialized Linux-based operating system called XOS that provides the ability to run several applications together in series or parallel and allows a single application to run across any number of processor cores or APM blades.

Major XOS Version	Ship Date
11.0.0	April 2015
10.0	March 2014
9.6.4	June 2014
9.6.3	July 2012
9.6	November 2011
9.5	November 2010
9.0	April 2010
8.5	October 2009
8.1	January 2009
8.0	March 2008
7.2	August 2007
7.0	November 2006
6.0	November 2005

C-Series (2004–2010)

Similar to the X-Series, the Crossbeam C-Series provided the ability to deploy any certified security application, but was limited to one application per appliance and had a fixed form factor. The C-Series ran a different operating system to the X-Series, called COS. The C-Series was discontinued in 2010.

Major COS Version	Ship Date
6.2	December 2009
6.1	March 2008
6.0	July 2007
5.1	February 2007
4.0	February 2006

Partners

Crossbeam’s business model is to partner with third-party security vendors, allowing customers to run multiple security applications [15] on a single X-Series platform. Customers can choose to install any number of active and certified products onto the X-Series platform.

Partner	Product Certified to run on Crossbeam	Partnership Status
Enterasys	Dragon IDS/IPS	Not Active
Secure Computing	SmartFilter	Now McAfee
McAfee	Firewall Enterprise	Active
Sourcefire	IPS, RNA	Active
Trend Micro	IMSS, IWSS	Active
Websense	Web Security Suite	Active
Check Point	FireWall-1, NGX, VPN-1 NGX, FireWall-1 GX, Power-1 VSX, Security Gateway	Active
IBM	Proventia IPS	Active
Imperva	SecureSphere	Active
Actiance	USG	Active
Sophos	PureMessage	Active
Sophos	PureMessage	Active

Branding

Crossbeam Systems, Inc. dropped ‘Systems’ from day-to-day operations in March 2010 when it rebranded the company with a new look. A new logo was introduced.

Company tag lines:

2005–2008	Safer, Simpler Networks
2008–2010	Consolidation. Virtualization. Simple. Security
2010 –	Rethink the network

Current Customers

Select Crossbeam customers include:

• Axpo Informatik AG
• Baylor University
• BT
• Centrica
• Cox Communications
• Fiserv
• NTT Communications
• Portugal Telecom (PT)
• Scottrade
• Sportsbet [16]
• Telefónica UK
• Telekomunikacja Polska
• Temple University
• The Weather Channel
• Volkswagen Group
• Globe Telecom
• Sify Technologies
• Glaxo Smith Kline UK
• RMIT University

Patents

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) awarded Crossbeam a patent in December 2010 for its approach to network security services delivery. Specifically, Crossbeam was awarded a patent for the underlying architecture of its X-Series platform, which provides a method for distributing applications and services in and throughout a network.

References