Juniper bets on UAC

BANGALORE: After a spell of dull revenues and slow product development, networking and security major Juniper Networks seems to have made a turnaround with new products, a couple of acquisitions like Peribit Networks and Funk Software, and an ambitious strategy to boot.

The company has revved up its security product portfolio in a bid to take on rival and market leader Cisco Systems in the lucrative $10 billion network security market. And the results are showing.

In Q2 this year, the company surpassed Checkpoint in total network security and is number one in the high-end firewalls and Secure Sockets Layer-Virtual Private Network (SSL-VPN) space

Hitesh Sheth, vice-president, Security products group, Juniper Networks, spoke to Priya Padmanabhan of CyberMedia News about the company’s Universal Access Control (UAC) security platform. Excerpts from the interview:

What kind of technology are you bringing to the market with the new Universal Access Control (UAC) suite?

The Universal Access Control (UAC) suite 2.0 is important. Mobility technology today allows employees to work from just about anywhere—in remote offices, hotels, airports, homes and even coffee shops. Because of the increase in mobility, the boundaries of perimeter security are thinning. The security dynamic is different now.

Juniper believes in having a holistic analysis of access. The security policy is enforced depending on the individual, location and device. The difference between Juniper and our close competitor (Cisco) is that we focus on access control that is policy based and based on open standards while they focus on on/of kind of admission control.

Access control is just a piece of the overall story. We want to deliver a high performance solution and provide system wide intelligence to enterprises. We are focused on delivering the right integrated platform.

We offer customers a choice to migrate to our platform. There is no proprietary lock-in. There is interoperability and open standards. Access control is in its formative phase. We expect the market to pick up in the next two years.

What is the difference between Juniper’s UAC platform and Cisco’s Network Admission Control (NAC)?

The difference between NAC and UAC is that we have a choice in enforcement. UAC is more flexible since it is based on the Trusted Network Connect standard (TNC) from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) that focuses on open standards. We look at the Layers two and three and follow the TNC standards. TNC-TCG makes it possible to have interoperability unlike our competitor’s products that are based on proprietary technology.

Our products work with any third party switch unlike Cisco, which works only with its own devices.

You acquired Funk software last year for $122 million. Have you integrated that company’s products into the platform?

Yes, we acquired Funk Software last December and we have succeeded in integrated their technology into the UAC. Funk had two key technologies-desktop and policy management engine and authentication tools. Its Odyssey Access Client (OAC) is 802.1 x supplicant software for configuring networks and user connections. This is part of the Juniper UAC solution. OAC is 802.1x supplicant software that controls access to a network.

What is Juniper’s security strategy for branch offices?

This year we have revved up our product platforms. We have introduced 11 new Secure Services Gateway (SSG) platforms this year. Those models(J-series routers) have integrated branch routing and Unified Threat Management. We have unified branch office routing and firewall in one device. This will be one of the fastest growing segments since an enterprise need not buy two separate devices since this is a single device.

How is your Netscreen SSL-VPN business doing? Do you believe that an integrated SSL-VPN-IP Sec solution works better than stand-alone SSL-VPN/IP Sec devices?

Our Netscreen business is doing quite well and is growing 15 per cent quarter on quarter.

I think there are three types of SSL-VPN products available in the market. First is the pure-play stand-alone SSL-VPN device. Then there are “pseudo-integrated” products that are discrete products that consist of the pure product along with a chassis. While this can result in Capex savings, there are no material benefits for the customer and besides the performance also degrades.

The third category is the functionally integrated product where we are present. Besides the stand-alone SSL-VPN product, we have a functionally integrated product, which has a secure services gateway. This can support T1 or T3 card and solves the access router complexity.

What kind of development work on security does the Juniper’s team in India handle?

The Indian team works on most of the product families. The team here works on platform services and access services. Besides this around 95 per cent of the J-series routers for the branch office market is developed here. The center also works on integration of products-integrating voice on J-series and WAN acceleration. The integration of the WAN acceleration platform will be achieved in 2007. We have around 400 engineers in India, of whom 170 work on security products.

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