Aventail and F5 Labs Partner to Provide the Highest Level of Scalability and Availability for Extranets.SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 23, 1998-- -- The Combination of Aventail ExtraNet Center(TM) and BIG/ip(R) To Make Scalability Seamless and Information Availability Fail-Safe -- Aventail Corporation, the leading provider of extranet security and management software, and F5 Labs, provider of innovative Internet/intranet Server Array Controller technology, today jointly announced a partnership that will deliver intelligent load balancing for extranets. F5 Lab's BIG/ip(R) has been rigorously tested and determined to be interoperable with Aventail ExtraNet Center(TM) in any corporate environment. Used in conjunction with Aventail ExtraNet Center, F5 Lab's BIG/ip will monitor availability and performance of multiple extranet servers and route traffic accordingly. This relationship expands Aventail's overall partner strategy to incorporate best-of-breed technologies for a comprehensive extranet solution. "As companies experience the business benefits of extranets, availability and scalability become increasingly important factors," stated Rob Spence, director of product marketing for Aventail Corporation. "Our new partnership with F5 Labs, enables an even higher level of scalability for customers looking to implement load balancing among multiple extranet servers. The combined solution provides fail-safe access to mission-critical information quickly, efficiently and with exceptional availability." Transparent Scalability for Mission-Critical Extranets As businesses begin to expand their extranets to hundreds of thousands of users, the ability to scale quickly and efficiently becomes a critical factor in establishing successful relationships with business partners, suppliers, consultants and customers. Corporations are discovering that a robust extranet can increase their competitive advantage, increase revenue, and leverage their investments in existing and future enterprise systems. To simplify extranet deployment, businesses want to provide users with a completely transparent method of connecting to the corporation and ensure fail-safe access to their extranet resources regardless of potential problems within the network. Situated between the network and Aventail ExtraNet Center, F5 Labs' Redundant BIG/ip Server will continuously monitor each extranet server for service availability and performance, guaranteeing access to the extranet by transparently sending users to another ExtraNet Center server if one is not available. Aventail ExtraNet Center then caches the authentication credentials and shares them across multiple servers making the load balancing transparent to the user. "F5 Lab's BIG/ip products provide the high availability and high performance essential to corporations with growing business-critical extranet applications," commented Steve Goldman, vice president of sales and marketing for F5 Labs. "Aventail's ExtraNet Center, along with our BIG/ip products, creates a highly reliable, secure and transparent infrastructure that allows businesses to deliver the highest level of service and quality to their critical third-party users." A Comprehensive Solution for Extranet Security and Management Aventail ExtraNet Center is a client/server software solution that continues to use the popular IETF See Internet Engineering Task Force. IETF - Internet Engineering Task Force standards SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) The leading security protocol on the Internet. Developed by Netscape, SSL is widely used to do two things: to validate the identity of a Web site and to create an encrypted connection for sending credit card and other personal data. and SOCKS v5, which are used in Aventail VPN (Virtual Private Network) A private network that is configured within a public network (a carrier's network or the Internet) in order to take advantage of the economies of scale and management facilities of large networks. . Aventail ExtraNet Center adds new functionality to Aventail VPN's existing feature set and delivers the necessary security, centralized management, and application and network integration for building an extranet. Aventail ExtraNet Center has the ability to seamlessly integrate into any existing infrastructure, making it less costly to install and easier to implement and support. Aventail's solution works with any IP-based application including legacy host, mainframe, Java, CORBA-based, custom corporate, and client/server applications from vendors such as SAP (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :SAP), BAAN (Nasdaq:BAANF), Oracle (Nasdaq:ORCL ORCL Oracle (stock symbol) ), and PeopleSoft (Nasdaq:PSFT PSFT PeopleSoft (stock symbol) PSFT Progressive Saturation Fourier Transform PSFT Prosoft-Technology, Inc ). Aventail ExtraNet Center also has the unique capability to traverse any firewall including Check Point Software's (Nasdaq:CHKPF) Firewall-1, AXENT Technologies' (Nasdaq:AXNT) Raptor Firewall, and IBM's (NYSE:IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) ) eNetwork Firewall. The Aventail solution also supports all popular authentication methods, including RADIUS, CHAP, Windows NT Domain, NDS, Security Dynamics' (Nasdaq:SDTI SDTI Serial Data Transport Interface SDTI Security Dynamics Technologies, Inc. SDTI San Diego Trolley Inc. SDTI Serial Digital Transport Protocol ) SecurID, and x.509 certificates from VeriSign (Nasdaq:VRSN VRSN Verisign, Inc. (stock abbreviation, AMEX) VRSN Version Number (NEC) ), Netscape (Nasdaq:NSCP NSCP National Schistosomiasis Control Program NSCP National Space Communications Program NSCP Native (Mode) Service Control Point (Tandem) ), GTE (Nasdaq:GTE), and Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT MSFT Microsoft (stock symbol) MSFT Movimento Sociale Fiamma Tricolore (Italy) MSFT Multi-Stage Fitness Test MSFT Master of Science in Family Therapy MSFT Macalester Students for Fair Trade ). BIG-ip -- Guaranteeing High Availability and Intelligent Load Balancing F5 Labs' BIG/ip high availability and intelligent load balancing network device and 3DNS (Domain Name System) A system for converting host names and domain names into IP addresses on the Internet or on local networks that use the TCP/IP protocol. For example, when a Web site address is given to the DNS either by typing a URL in a browser or behind the WAN high availability device provide 100 percent reliable consistent access to business-critical Internet and intranet applications by enabling the fail-safe use of scalable content servers. Intelligently allocating Internet requests across a group of inexpensive network servers, BIG/ip balances the load on Internet, intranet and extranet servers to guarantee reliable, high performance access. BIG/ip is a redundant solution with no single point of failure. Secure remote administration is provided with SSL for the browser and SSH for command line interfaces. About Aventail Corporation Aventail is at the forefront of providing extranet security and management software solutions that allow organizations to securely extend their enterprise applications to strategic partners, suppliers, customers, consultants, and other key individuals. Aventail's extranet solutions enable organizations to increase their competitive advantage, raise profits, and leverage their investments in existing and future enterprise systems. With a strong reputation for providing highly secure and easy-to-manage software solutions, Aventail has received numerous industry awards from publications such as InfoWorld, Network Computing, LAN (Local Area Network) A communications network that serves users within a confined geographical area. The "clients" are the user's workstations typically running Windows, although Mac and Linux clients are also used. Times, BYTE Magazine, Software Digest, and Computer Reseller News. Aventail Corporation is a privately held company privately held company A firm whose shares are held within a relatively small circle of owners and are not traded publicly. headquartered in Seattle, Washington. For more information on the company and its products, please visit the company's Web site at www.aventail.com, or contact the company directly at 206/215-1111, 877-AVENTAIL, or info@aventail.com. Information on Aventail can also be attained through Yahoo (Nasdaq:YHOO YHOO Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ symbol) ), Infoseek (Nasdaq:SEEK), Lycos (Nasdaq:LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) A technology used to make microdisplays for rear-projection TVs and head-mounted displays (HMDs). Each LCoS chip hosts a grayscale LCD shutter sandwiched between a cover glass and a mirror. ), and Excite (Nasdaq:XCIT). About F5 Labs F5 Labs is a privately held software company funded, in part, by Menlo Ventures and IDG, of Menlo Park and San Francisco, respectively. F5 labs' BIG/ip platform and 3DNS System enable organizations to provide reliable, consistent access to their mission critical Internet and intranet applications through the fail-safe use of scalable content servers. The company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with offices located in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Boston, New York Boston is a town in Erie County, New York, United States. The population was 7,897 at the 2000 census. The town is named after Boston, Massachusetts. The Town of Boston is an interior town of the county and one of the county's "Southtowns. , Atlanta and Washington, D.C. F5 Labs is located on the Web at www.f5.com. Aventail and Aventail ExtraNet Center are trademarks of Aventail Corporation. BIG/ip is a trademark of F5 Labs. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion