* Automating policy enforcement of Cisco and NetScreen gear
SmartPipes has been around for a couple of years selling software that configures Cisco and more recently NetScreen VPN devices from a single software platform.
Initially, SmartPipes sold its IP PolicyPro SecureSite software technology as a service for service providers. A service provider that wanted to offer a VPN service based on Cisco gear could hire SmartPipes to remotely configure the VPN equipment at customer sites.
More recently, SmartPipes has started selling its software directly to service providers and to enterprises that want to build their own VPNs based on tools from Cisco or NetScreen, or a mix of the two.
It uses a graphical interface that abstracts VPN tunnel information and topology and then translates the policies users set into actual commands that are given to the individual VPN devices in the network to enforce the policies. The idea behind this is that automating the process means that a network administrator doesn’t have to go to each individual machine to configure it.
It also means that because policies are set centrally once and delivered automatically to each machine, there is less opportunity for users to punch in the wrong data, creating complications that can extend the deployment process unpredictably. So the apparent benefits are that SmartPipes can save time and reduce errors.
The company hired the Tolly Group – an independent testing company – to study the difference measured in time and number of steps between setting up Cisco and NetScreen VPN gear box by box and by using SmatPipes software.
Guess what? It’s faster and takes fewer steps to set up a VPN using SmartPipes software than it is doing the same box by box. (The results are posted at www.tolly.com. The larger the VPN, the more time and steps you save.
That said, each potential buyer of the software has to weight whether it is worth the price to buy the software.
