* Aventail sells SSL VPN access service wholesale business to Netifice
Aventail has sold off its SSL VPN access service wholesale business to Netifice, a VPN service provider.
The deal was for an undisclosed amount, but an Aventail spokeswoman said it was “a good-size piece of the $55 million they got in funding.” The deal also guarantees that Netifice will buy Aventail gear to support the service for the next four years.
Aventail says this is good for two reasons. First, it gives the company some cash while also guaranteeing some revenue for its products sold to Netifice to support the service. Second, it eliminates the need to pay attention to the service side of its business and focus exclusively on its gateways. Presumably, this is where the cash will be spent.
Aventail says its vision is to push SSL VPNs beyond just remote access for employees and business partners and toward becoming a secure application gateway. Traffic coming in from the Internet wouldn’t be the only traffic that runs through Aventail appliances. Any business applications that ought to be secured on the WAN or LAN would use the devices.
Since security breaches and malware can also come from within business networks, it is important to protect the applications and data that are most important to a company, regardless of where users are trying to access them from, Aventail says. The amount of protection corporate assets get shouldn’t depend on the location of the person and machine trying to access; it should be based on how vital the resource is.
This makes sense, and it will be interesting to see if businesses buy into the model and into Aventail as the company to provide the gateway security.
