Aventail, a provider of secure VPN appliances and services, has been bought by the security firm SonicWall.
SonicWall announced on Tuesday that it had paid approximately $25m (£12.7m) for Aventail, which it said would complement its existing product range. While SonicWall’s current offerings are pitched at small to medium-sized businesses, Aventail, also a US-based company, had traditionally targeted the higher end of the SSL VPN (secure socket layer virtual private network) market.
“The Aventail acquisition is an important step in our growth strategy,” said SonicWall president and chief executive officer, Matthew Medeiros, on Tuesday. “SonicWall is number one in SSL VPN unit share worldwide, and this acquisition will help grow our revenue share. We will compete more effectively in the remote access space, building on complementary elements in our two organisations, and offer new solutions that enhance our relevance for today’s dynamic enterprise.”
SonicWall’s purchase is the latest in a series of mergers and acquisitions among VPN vendors. Microsoft last year bought VPN specialist Whale Associates, which competes in the SSL VPN market with Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Citrix Systems and SonicWall.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
The battle between 3G and Wi-Fi for dominance of the wireless internet world will all come down to which offers the broadest benefits to individual users, analysts have predicted.
The two technologies offer a variety of different benefits and experts predict they will continue to co-exist, but competition between 3G and Wi-Fi does appear to be hotting up.
Vodafone has announced it will cut its 3G mobile broadband tariffs by almost half from 2 July, with the monthly tariff falling from £45 to £25 and 24-hour access available for £8.50.
A Vodafone spokeswoman said the changes weren’t really a reaction to anything — being more down to customer needs than competing with Wi-Fi — but it certainly makes 3G a more viable proposition than it has been previously.
Ian Fogg, analyst with JupiterResearch, suggests 3G is becoming more competitive with Wi-Fi. He said that although Wi-Fi has historically been faster than 3G, the advent of HSDPA (also known as 3.5G) means this is not so much the case any more.
Fogg said: “Vodafone is hoping that for business travellers the much greater coverage of 3G will prove attractive. By comparison the Wi-Fi network is very small.”
He added that 3G is more flexible and doesn’t come with the hassle of Wi-Fi — such as finding a hotspot or logging on — allowing people to get more done.
He added that 3G is benefiting from a “tremendous industry push” with “a lot of market traction behind it”.
However, Fogg acknowledged that Wi-Fi provides more effective coverage in buildings and offers greater bandwidth and so still has a role to play.
When asked about the role WiMax might play in the near future, Fogg said: “WiMax is a technology searching for a market. Mobile data is going to be very challenging for WiMax in Europe.”
Dean Bubley, founder of analyst house Disruptive Analysis, said: “There’s not going to any one clear winner on this.”
He added: “From Vodafone’s point of view, [tariff reduction] makes a huge amount of sense. That sounds a lot more reasonable.”
But he also suggested this doesn’t mean 3G will suddenly overtake Wi-Fi. He said: “3G is patchy and will stay patchy.”
Bubley also raised the issue of possible restrictions with 3G, such as the total amount of data that can be transferred or whether it can offer VPN and VoIP, as Wi-Fi does.
He added: “The main difference about Wi-Fi is that you can own it.”
As for the likely winner, Bubley said: “It’ll come down to the individual users.”
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Moroccan operator Wana has selected Accenture and Telcordia to provide a fulfilment solution designed to support its next-generation, converged IP network infrastructure. Accenture and Telcordia will help Wana gain efficiencies in operations, engineering, IT, marketing and sales. Wana provides voice, internet access and VPN over its multi-technology access network, which uses CDMA, wireless local loop and fibre. As the lead integrator on the project, Accenture will provide application development support. The company will use Accenture Communications Solutions suite, which provides ready-to-use components within a common integration framework. The OSS deployment will integrate Telcordia Granite Inventory and Telcordia Expediter, part of the Telcordia Fulfillment Suite, to support all of Wana’s network infrastructure needs on a single platform.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
While the security firm already has a mobile antivirus product, Symantec Mobile Security Suite 5.0 will include antivirus, firewall, data encryption and an enterprise management console for IT administrators.
The suite, due for release in May, will also offer an add-on to let users connect to corporate networks through IPSec VPN tunnels, and network access control so IT administrators can make sure that only the right devices are connecting to the corporate network.
Administrators will be able to use the suite to enable or disable Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and device syncing, and verify whether or not the device’s security applications have been tampered with.
The issue of mobile security has proved controversial in the past with accusations that mobile threats are over-hyped.
A consumer version of the enterprise Mobile Security Suite, called Norton Mobile Security, will also be released in May and will include many of the enterprise version’s elements, with the exception of its VPN capabilities.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
SonicWall buys Aventail
