Is NAC still hanging in?

So I am running around at the RSA Conference, talking to different vendors.  One of the groups I talked to is a switch vendor that has been around a long time but almost died a few years back.  So these guys have spent the last 5-6 years rebuilding themselves, trying to come back into mainstream.  And one way they are doing it is by building NAC into their infrastructure.  They actually had a "NAC" solution long before NAC was cool.  They had a partnership with Microsoft for developing the 802.1x.  They really were on the front end of the game, and if their management had not screwed up, they might have been in a controlling position in the NAC market today.

Anyway, as I was interviewing the marketing VP, he made a point that I have been thinking about for the last few months.  NAC is not a standalone solution, it is a feature.  It is one part of a holistic security model.  And I had to agree with him because of MSFT finally bringing out NAP and other bigger infrastructure companies starting to get a hold on NAC.

So where does that leave the NAC specialty shops?  What do they need to do to survive?  Do they keep touting their interoperability with NAP like they USED to do with Cisco?  Do they get bought?  Do they continue to OEM their solutions and hope that keeps them afloat?  I just see too many big names starting to make this a feature and not a solution (I read recently somewhere that the term "solution" was a misnomer).  And I see too many of these companies starting to fail. 

I have friends in the industry, so I just have to wonder where it is all going.  I think NAC is a good part of security.  I think many of the speciality shops do a very good job at NAC.  But can they keep the industry alive, or is absorption or failure inevitable?