It’s early December.  And right on schedule, here’s the Gartner MQ reports for both SSL VPN and NAC.  As always, we are extremely proud of these and know that you will enjoy reading them just as much as I did.  If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up in the comments section.

Gartner Magic Quadrant Report for NAC

Gartner Magic Quadrant Report for SSL VPN

Also note on the SSL VPN that the author states “Based on market dynamics, Gartner will discontinue the SSL VPN Magic Quadrant after this 2011 report.”  Then feel free to go back through every prior report and report back which vendor is the only one to have lasted in the upper-right quadrant through every single SSL VPN MQ.  I think you can see where I am heading with this.  :-)

Application Acceleration is here!  Now you can add on the Juniper Application Acceleration product (think WAN acceleration for clients) to boost remote access performance, especially across high latency or low bandwidth connections.  I used this myself several months ago while it was in beta, connecting back to California from Bangalore, and the difference was definitely noticeable.

Seamless integrates with Junos Pulse on the client!

Hardware:

• MAG4611 (acceleration for up to 250 users)
• MAG-SM161 (acceleration for up to 250 users)
• MAG-SM361 (acceleration for up to 1000 users)

+ Licensing for the right user counts, of course.

You will quickly see that these numbers don’t exactly align with the similarly named SSL VPN MAG systems.  But that’s okay, because you really only need to enable this acceleration for those who, as noted above, are perhaps not already rockin’ high speed, low latency connections.  You might identify a particular remote office or mobile network that you want to map to the “accelerated” role by simply using a source IP address, at which point those users coming from that particular IP address range will enjoy the enhanced experience.  Or you might just be selfish and make it so that your connections are always accelerated no matter how great your connection is, which is perfectly fine with us as well.  :-)

So, who’s going to be the first to spend their end of year budget surplus on more speed and then come back here to brag to everyone else?

Well, well, well.  WebSockets, now officially referred to as RFC 6455, is growing up right before our very eyes. 

Anyone interested in actually seeing where WebSockets is going would benefit from looking at applications such as Ericom AccessNow and RemoteSpark’s Spark View, both of which are pretty early to market and well poised to capture a fair amount of attention.  You can bet those looking at VDI will now be taking a peek at what HTML5 WebSockets has to offer for RDP, especially for the more casual remote access use cases. 

Here’s a link to a deeper dive.

If you are considering Ericom, RemoteSpark, or any other WebSockets application, please feel free to reach out to me via e-mail or through the public comments.  As you might have guessed, it’s an area that we are closely watching and eager to partner with our customers on, as it key in the early days of any highly valued RFC or similar standard.

Last week I was fortunate enough to be able to carve out some time to attend the beta Junos Pulse Access Control Service (JPACS) course.  This course will replace the existing UAC/NAC course, bringing with it a very up-to-date look and feel.  Junos Pulse, MAG hardware, Common ACCESS licensing, SRX, and Junos are all there, on top of Odyssey and all the general topics. 

I’m now looking forward to hearing some of the initial feeback from cusotmers and partners. 

Definitely worth checking out.  Events at this level don’t come around every day.

“Securing Your Employees’ Mobile Devices” Joint Webcast from IBM and Juniper

As your employees become increasingly mobile, there is a greater demand for remote access to corporate data from mobile devices. Although remote access can improve employee productivity, you need a solid security plan in place so you aren’t left vulnerable to potentially disastrous data theft or loss.

In this free webcast on Tuesday, November 29 at 1PM EST, you will hear about IBM’s mobile device security managed service, based on Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite, and learn how to secure corporate data where more and more employees are using mobile devices.

Some of the topics will be:

• Mobile security threat trends.
• Changes in IT driving need for mobile security.
• Strengths and weaknesses of solutions.
• What companies are saying about plans for securing mobile devices.
• What IBM is doing to secure employee’s mobile devices.

Congratulations are in order.  This time Orange Business Services managed to secure a huge win at the 2011 World Communication Awards, earning the “Best New Service” award with their VPN Galerie offering.

From the press release:

“Business VPN Galerie, a service based on the cloud-ready network of Orange Business Services, was named Best New Service. Business VPN Galerie is the world’s first hub linking Orange VPN customers directly to the world of cloud service providers ensuring access, performance, and high level of security at lower costs than through leased lines. Application suppliers connect to Orange via a dedicated line, which then distributes the applications on demand, making it seamlessly part of a customer’s VPN. Orange launched Business VPN Galerie to facilitate software as a service adoption by providing security and performance guarantees.”

Recently I had a call with one of our sales guys who wanted to know more about what was going on with Pulse and SSL VPN virtual appliances in the service provider space.  When I went over what OBS was doing with their VPN Galerie, he quickly responded with “great name!”.  I tend to agree.  The name itself is quite inviting, just begging customers to take a look and see what is lurking behind the curtain.  That, combined with the Flexible SSL component announced just ahead of this, really brings into focus just how much service providers are doing to bring security and SaaS to the mobile workforce.  As detailed in the Flexible SSL press release, “Flexible SSL is enabled by Juniper Networks Junos Pulse – a simple, intuitive client that provides secure, authenticated access for remote and mobile users – and Juniper Networks SSL VPN Virtual Appliance that enables a scalable cloud offering architecture.”

Well done, OBS!

I’m a bit late in broadcasting this one, but better late than never I guess.

Check out the story over at All Things  D, “IBM Launches Service to Secure Smart Phones at the Office“.

While this speaks more directly to the Mobile Security side of Junos Pulse, it’s certainly important to remember that the secure VPN access of Junos Pulse is also a big piece of the Junos Pulse platform.  The combination of VPN and mobile security is really proving to be a winning combination.

Pulse and iPass together at last.

“– A seamless user experience via a unified client (Junos Pulse) that offers on-campus and off-campus connectivity, security and acceleration– all contained within a single interface delivering a simple, intuitive user experience.

– Connectivity management for all remote connections, helping remote users establish the appropriate Internet connection based on corporate policies.

– Policy controls and visibility required to ensure that cost and compliance measures are enforced for all users.”

Looking forward to a great week in Sunnyvale to go through the TOIs (Transfer of Information) for our next major software releases on both the SSL VPN and UAC/NAC products.  For the SSL VPN, this next release is known internally as Denali and will almost surely end up as 7.2 upon release.

While still a little bit down the road before their launch, now is the time when we swing the doors wide open for our extended teams and share all the nitty-gritty details.  JTAC, QA, development, engineering, product management, technical marketing, and system engineering specialists all huddle up to learn, collaborate and plan for the launch.  It’s always an exciting time, as it is not only a rich learning environment with the real experts sharing all the details, but marks a major milestone in the release cycle.  After this, we get to really start focusing on closing out the beta and getting everything buttoned up for release.

One important reminder though: 7.2 will not run on the SA2000, SA4000 or SA6000 appliances.

RSA and Juniper Webcast: Secure Mobile Access for Your Small Business

In this joint webcast on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 2:30PM EST, experts from Juniper Networks and RSA examine the challenges small- and mid-size organizations face in balancing access risk with the escalating demands of an increasingly mobile workforce and “always connected” customers. You’ll learn about the latest efforts to extend full Layer 3 VPN access to iOS and Android devices via Junos Pulse, and how SSL VPN access from any device can – and should – be secured with multi-factor authentication.

Topics include:The drivers behind securing remote users

• Securing SSL VPNs – which authentication options will best suit your needs
• The newest SSL VPN & authentication solutions for providing secure remote access to small- and mid-size organizations

You can register here.

14 October Update:  The recorded presentation can be accessed here and the PPT file can be accessed here.