The company, which has sold software and managed services in the space for about six years, this week goes to general availability with its first foray into the SSL VPN appliance market. Its offering, priced at $24,000, is called the EX-1500.

IPSec was designed for site-to-site, it’s since been brought into use a little bit for remote access, said VP of product management and marketing Sarah Daniels. This is the first and only SSL VPN [that allows buyers] to retire their IPSec VPN to just site-to-site.

SSL VPNs, as most potential buyers probably know by now, can cut some of the cost and complexity out of deploying a VPN by eliminating the need for hundreds or thousands of IPSec clients to be configured and managed.

But they generally have been limited in which applications they can allow remote users to access. HTTP proxies at their core, they have been limited to applications with web interfaces and easily plugged-in applications such as email.

But companies such as Aventail, Neoteris Inc and SafeWeb Inc have created ways for additional applications to be accessed. Software adaptors on the appliance can be used to proxy for the back-end application and give it a web interface.

Aventail has had a Windows agent, Connect, which proxies for the application on the remote device, as part of its product line for some time, and Neoteris last May came out with Java applet that filled a similar function but ran through the browser on demand.

Aventail has now added a Java applet to its options, OnDemand, meaning users can use the applet, the Windows program, or just the browser, to access their applications (depending on the application and how the system is configured).

Along with new application adaptors on the appliance that allow access to Windows file shares, Daniels said the system can now be used to provide secure remote access to Windows Terminal Services, telnet, and client/server applications.

The emergence of the SSL VPN market has IPSec VPN vendors, such as Check Point Software Technologies Ltd and Nortel Networks Inc, adding SSL functionality to their existing products, though Aventail calls this functionality early stage.

We do recognize the need for the coexistence of both SSL VPNs and IPSec VPNs, said Check Point’s senior product manager Neil Gehani, adding that Check Point allows both to be managed in one platform. We don’t think IPSec is going away any time soon.

Gehani observed that there comes a point when the convenience difference between the agent software and an IPSec client becomes slight. A fat client, he said, has the extra security of a personal firewall. He also questioned how easy it will be for SSL VPNs to handle emerging applications such as voice over IP.

Source: Computerwire