Legislation that today extends the right to flexible working to an extra 4.5 million British workers could drive business appetite for VPN, and is one market driver to be tapped by German software security supplier NCP Engineering GmbH as it expands into the UK.
Announcing the company’s intention to expand its geographical reach, Simon Ford, Global Sales Director of NCP said, “We focused on the German market last year, but will now look to develop our position in the UK, US and the Nordics during the coming year.”
He said the privately-held company is financially sound and debt-free. “The company is financially-independent, has software solutions that are hardware-independent, and VPN security systems that are protocol-independent” he told us. “The VPN software can handle both IPSec and SSL VPN protocol choices at the gateway.”
Ford said the company also had the market’s first Windows 7 Universal IPSec VPN client, and which – despite the Microsoft software still being way off commercial release – was already selling.
NCP has no direct sales force but has good reseller and OEM connections, with the likes of Watchguard and mobile operator T-Mobile both using OEM versions of its VPN software.
Set up in Nuremberg in 1986, the business currently has a revenue of around $15 million.
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The company produces NCP Client Software that combines a built-in personal firewall which can be raised or lowered depending on where a user access point originates, along with systems that will automatically manage secure dial-up or UMTS/GRPS wireless access, and WLAN-registration.
The company said that end-users can connect from any device to the network through a secure VPN tunnel with one click, regardless of whether they are on a WLAN, LAN or cellular network.
The software can load onto any client, and is good for use on a range of 32-bit and 64-bit platforms from Windows 2000, XP and Vista, to Windows Mobile and Symbian smart phone environments.
The advantage offered by its products is that they are all based on one software kernel so new security and communication technologies can be implemented quickly into the software, the company claimed.
For large-scale enterprise deployment, the supplier also produces an administration console from where a security administrator can set and apply security policies. “Admins could monitor the number of secure VPN tunnels running, they can pull across user identities from any LDAP directory, it’s very flexible,” Ford explained.
If the security policies are not met, the teleworker automatically lands in a quarantine zone, where either the relevant measures are taken or privileges are limited.
NCP competes in an extremely competitive market segment, where Cisco and Check Point Software tend to dominate, but believes its agnostic approach will win it business. Each of its VPN components integrates fully with all Cisco, Juniper, Check Point, SonicWall and other vendor equipment, preserving existing technology investments for customers.
