Chris Witeck, director of product marketing at Aventail, told WindowsForDevices.com, "previous support for SSL VPN for smartphones was limited." The earlier support was "browser-based" and lacked endpoint control.
Aventail SSL VPN access options
(Click to enlarge)Key new features in the new version, according to the company, include:
- Instant email and access
- Seamless mobile roaming
- Mobile endpoint control
- Granular access controls
The market has changed, according to Witeck, since
Aventail Mobile 2 was introduced in May of 2006. Then the focus was on PDAs. Now, he says, IT people are begging for full support for smartphones.
With the new version of Connect Mobile, users of Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs can get continual "push" email from their Microsoft Exchange or Lotus iNotes servers without, according to the company, "putting their email servers in the DMZ" or exporting their corporate email to a service provider. Smartphone users can also change networks during their sessions without having to re-authenticate or re-launch the VPN.
The new version of Connect Mobile also provides endpoint control. According to the company, Windows Mobile devices can now be seamlessly interrogated to determine the appropriate level of trust for the device before access is granted, and digital certificates can be checked.
There are also granular access controls. Connect Mobile leverages the unified access control policies of the Aventail SSL VPN appliance, to limit access to sensitive corporate data based on user ID and device trust. As a result, there is no need to set up and manage different policies and solutions just for mobile devices, the company says.
Connect Mobile is a component of Aventail's integrated hardware/software remote access support for laptops, kiosks, home computers, and Windows Mobile PDAs and smartphones.
Connect Mobile for smartphones is now in beta, and is expected to achieve full production release this summer, the company said. An add-on feature to Aventail's SSL VPN appliances, Aventail Connect Mobile's pricing starts at $995.
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