Aventail, a provider of secure VPN appliances and services, has been bought by the security firm SonicWall.
SonicWall announced Tuesday that it had paid approximately US$25 million for Aventail, which it said would complement its existing product range. While SonicWall's current offerings are pitched at small to medium-sized businesses, Aventail, also a U.S.-based company, had traditionally targeted the higher end of the SSL VPN (secure socket layer virtual private network) market.
"The Aventail acquisition is an important step in our growth strategy," said SonicWall president and chief executive officer, Matthew Medeiros, on Tuesday. "SonicWall is number one in SSL VPN unit share worldwide, and this acquisition will help grow our revenue share. We will compete more effectively in the remote access space, building on complementary elements in our two organizations, and offer new solutions that enhance our relevance for today's dynamic enterprise."
SonicWall's purchase is the latest in a series of mergers and acquisitions among VPN vendors. Microsoft last year bought VPN specialist Whale Communications, which competes in the SSL VPN market with Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Citrix Systems and SonicWall.
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This is an excellent combination and a good deal for both companies. SonicWall picks up a SSL VPN-based, remote access gateway with policy-based, access controls and endpoint security FAR RICHER than SonicWall's own SSL VPN products. Aventail gains channel strength and no longer carries an unbearable cost structure as an independent vendor with a single product line (Aventail lost $10M on $18M of revenue in 2006.) Now SonicWall needs to acquire advanced NAC technology that deals with both remote and local access and integrate its individual access products - including its own network intrusion prevention product. This will take at least 18 to 24 months. Meanwhile the highly competitive "access gateway" landscape is changing rapidly. (A comprehensive analysis of the evolving admission and access control marketplace is available at the Secure Access Central security portal.) SonicWall appears capable and committed to becoming a top-tier access control vendor but this will remain a difficult challenge.
Posted by Dana Hendrickson on Thursday, June 14 2007 11:23 PM