NAC vendor Bradford Networks has convinced investors to bet another $8 million on the success of the company.

This is notable because it comes at a time when some other independent NAC vendors are switching focus, struggling or going belly up and when networking vendors are trying to integrate NAC with network infrastructure (Compare NAC products).

The reasons Updata Partners give for the funding are that so far Bradford has done well enough on just $2.8 million in funding since August of 2006. “That’s a lot less than a lot of other independent vendors in the space,” says Carter Griffin, partner at Updata.

While the company started off specializing in deployments for colleges, it has expanded into businesses, he says. The out-of-band architecture that enables installation of Bradford NAC gear without major overhauls to the network it serves is also attractive, he says. Overlaying NAC on an existing network and using previously defined policies make the product more flexible and able to scale to large networks, he says.

Even though other vendors are embedding NAC technology in switches and other infrastructure, Griffin says he thinks NAC overlays will remain valuable to handle unmanaged devices used by contractors and guests.

For its part, Bradford says it will spend the $8 million to step up marketing to more categories of business including healthcare, finance, energy and media companies.

The company will also make a push into Europe, which lags behind the U.S. in NAC adoption. Money will also be invested in marketing that may include educational seminars and in developing new features for the product.

Tim Greene is senior editor at Network World.