I'm nearly three weeks behind the news that Interlink, makers of LucidLink, have shuttered their doors: LucidLink was standalone software that employed 802.1X authentication for small- to medium-sized networks using a custom software client and simple centralized account management designed for an office manager to handle.
The company raised $15.5 million across three rounds of funding, and this business journal report indicates they had $5 million in revenue in 2004. Still, it wasn't enough to continue, although the firm isn't in bankruptcy. A few employees are buying older product lines, while LucidLink may be sold off.
Price competition shouldn't have been a factor in Interlink's failure to take hold, nor platform compatibility, as they supported the major Windows flavors. I wrote a comparison of LucidLink against Corriente Networks's Elektron Server (more expertise need, no per-seat license fees), BoxedWireless (outsourced 802.1X with a generic supplicant), and WSC Guard (proprietary client, acquired by McAfee). It was one of the simplest and among the second cheapest for smaller networks.
I deal with a lot of press, marketing, and engineering folks in my daily role here, and the Interlink folks were among the top, so I hope we'll see them surface again.
Not only have they shuttered their doors, but their servers just went down making their client application non-functioning on my network.
So the money I just sent them last month was a rip-off. No thanks, I won't be going with the old employees.
Say what you will but this is why most people continue to buy inferior Cisco products--because at least they will be around to give you their crappy support system!