Juniper Networks make major play to secure and manage mobile devices

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 27 October 2010 09:56

IT Industry - Strategy

Juniper Networks has unveiled an ambitious plan to dominate the market for securing and managing mobile devices with the launch of the Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite.

The offering comes from the acquisition earlier this year of SMobile Systems - which provides anti-virus, personal firewall, anti-spam, loss and theft prevention and monitoring and control services - and which has been integrated with SSL-VPN and remote access control from Juniper onto the Junos Pulse application platform for mobile devices.

(Junos Pulse is the client counterpart of Junos Space, an application development platform for the Junos operating system that runs all Juniper's routing, switching and security products. Both were announced last October.)

Separately, Juniper has announced the opening of the Juniper Global Threat Centre, located in Columbus Ohio, claiming it to be "the first and only centre dedicated to tracking, responding and researching threats to mobile devices,

According to Juniper, the Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite "enables enterprises to provide employees secure access to corporate applications and e-mail on mobile devices, while keeping business data and networks safe. It also lets service providers deliver a worry-free mobile experience to consumers and enterprises who routinely store sensitive information on their smart phones'¦

"It remotely backs up and restores data, can locate devices in the event they are lost or stolen, and can send an alert when a SIM has been removed, swapped or replaced'¦Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite also provides peace of mind for parents who wish to protect their children from inappropriate contact and exploitation."

Juniper claims Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite to be "the only mobile security solution that allows enterprise IT departments to flexibly support virtually any personal mobile device, regardless of platform."  The SMobile component, however forms the basis of Sybase 365's suite of mobile device management and security services under an OEM agreement. Juniper has yet to make any statement on the future of that arrangement. Karim Toubba, vice president product marketing in Juniper's Service Layer Technologies business group, told ExchangeDaily: "We are in conversation with Sybase365 as to how we move forward with that relationship."

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