Who’s occupying Remote Access space in the market?
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by: Evie K. Bruce
Undoubtedly, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), to answer the title question. Today, SSl VPN are so popular that they are seen as serious competitors in this niche marketplace. Analysts foretell that this technology has the potential to replace IP Security Protocol (IPSec) VPNs in the remote access space. This id due to several factors.
These are Government Orders which shape key industry sections to keep private information that is electronically distributed; the growing use of extranets where non-employees or remote workers and business partners are given safe access to the company’s communication networks; and a growing demand by telecommuters for flexi-time work options which include working from home.
Obviously, this puts SSL VPNs in a comfortable position, since they are well-matched for the business needs of the remote access space with their many advantages such as high security, ease of use, low costs and flexibility of accessing the application.
With remote-access IPSec VPNs, security is expensive. Further, it’s a daunting task to distribute IPSec clients among remote machines and configure them for access. And since they run at the level of the company network, IPSec VPNs do a good job of providing a telecommuter’s remote PC with comprehensive network visibility. Here, however, enforcing policies and security controls cannot be applied easily. Therefore, remote-access IPSec VPNs end up being expensive for owners, as compared with SSL VPNs.
In today’s dynamic business network, the need for a constantly-changing suite of applications is being more and more keenly felt, since there is a growing base of diverse users. These data centers, being heterogeneous in nature, usually comprise client/server and legacy applications on Windows Terminal Servers, mainframes, UNIX/Linux servers and AS/400 machines, besides Web applications that are fixed on intranet Web servers.
A nerve-wracking job in this regard has been to open up this complex world to vendors, partners and employees and to deploy remote access, considering network protection also has to be provided. To reduce the difficulty of this task, enterprises are now opting for the easy to use and manage SSL-based VPNs, which are also integrated to satisfy the growing needs of diverse enterprise networks.
The SSL VPNs of today have taken their product to the next level by consolidating three application-access technologies into one application-layer gateway device. These are safe intranet access to Web-based portals and applications; browser-based access to remote legacy applications without a client, and providing client/server applications with desktop access over SSL tunneling.
By providing secure access remotely, IT managers face the challenge of providing critical legacy applications in a simple, easy to use format that gives the same access on-demand to integrated information as counterparts with Web browsers.
Some SSL VPN appliances provide clientless, remote access to their legacy applications by incorporating technology that is Web-enabled right within the platform. Through this integrated approach, the need for businesses to organize and maintain server-focused middleware and related clients of the remote access kind is eliminated. Here, both server and client sections of an application are hosted in the heart of the corporate data center. By this means, end users or telecommuters only require a browser to view applications that are remotely located without the installation of any extra software or configuring a remote computer.
Through an SSL VPN appliance, client/server applications are made available to remote users through the Web. This gives organizations the opportunity to get the best out of their legacy application infrastructure without investing any expensive applications for redevelopment or installing remote PCs.
About the Author
Elliot R. Kelly is the author of this article on SSL VN. Find more information about SSL VN here.
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