Monday, 22 May 2006

Microsoft to Buy SSL VPN Vendor

Microsoft has announced that it has agreed to acquire Whale Communications Ltd., a provider of secure access products, including secure sockets layer (SSL) virtual private networks (VPN) and Web application firewalls. The acquisition will give Microsoft’s customers a broader range of choices for providing secure access from more locations and devices.

Whale’s solutions provide remote access, deep content inspection and granular access control, enabling businesses to protect corporate applications and data when accessed remotely by mobile workers, partners and customers.

Microsoft said Whale’s intelligent application gateway and application optimizers will add complementary SSL VPN and comprehensive application-layer filtering capabilities to Microsoft’s existing secure access solutions built around Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA Server), which provide site-to-site and remote access VPN and application publishing.

Whale Communications will maintain all current operations until the transaction closes, Microsoft said.