Microsoft catches SSL VPN vendor Whale

18.05.2006
Microsoft Corp. Thursday announced plans to acquire SSL VPN vendor Whale Communications Inc. in a bid to establish more of a presence in the growing market for secure access products.

The acquisition will give Microsoft access to Whale's Windows-based Secure Socket Layer Virtual Private Network (SSL VPN) appliances and Web firewall products designed to protect enterprise applications when they're accessed by remote workers, partners and customers.

The Whale products build on the site-to-site and remote access VPN and application publishing capabilities built into Microsoft's Windows Server and Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) server, said Steve Brown, a director of product management at Microsoft.

The products will allow companies to enable secure remote access to a broad range of applications from a variety of mobile devices, including laptops, smart phones and PDAs, said Joel Sloss, senior product manager with Microsoft's secure access group. One of the factors that separates Fort lee, N.J.-based Whale from other vendors in the SSL VPN market is the work Whale has done in providing application-specific protection for several applications, Sloss said.

Peter Greco, CIO at Regis University in Denver, welcomed the planned purchase because it will create a "better development path" for Whale's products.

For the past six months, the university has been using Whale's SSL VPN technologies to allow users to access SharePoint applications over the Web. For users, "the Whale SSL VPN appliance has created an experience exactly like being on campus," because it allows them to securely access applications without VPN client technology on their systems, he said. "I feel pretty good about Microsoft's acquisition. This should make more resources available" for future product development, he said.