Altor Strengthens Juniper's Virtualization Security

Juniper Networks' decision to increase its stake in virtualizationsecurity specialist Altor Networks to 100 percent was a fairly obviousmove, says analyst Zeus Kerravala of the  Yankee Group. "Juniper has beentrying to strengthen their enterprise portfolio, trying to become amore relevant vendor. This seems to fit in where Juniper is alreadystrong and gives them a stronger presence," Kerravala says. 

The networking company was part of a group investing$10 million in Altor Networks last March, and Juniper is nowshelling out approximately $95 million for the rest of the shares.Building on the existing technology partnership, the acquisition willextend Juniper's security offerings for both the enterprise andservice provider virtualization markets.

The company says securityplays a critical role in the new network and it wanted to extend itssecurity footprint. The "old network" is broken and it doesn't scale,particularly in the data center, according to Juniper.

Juniper is already a leader in datacenter security, especially high-end firewalls starting in the $30,000range, where it holds a 48 percent share.For some time, customers have been asking about Juniper'svirtualization strategy, which led to the investment in, andpartnership with, Altor.

Ultimately, the company decided this was anarea it wanted to own in order to bridge the gap between the physical andvirtual security worlds. The next six to nine months will seeAltor integration with Juniper's management software, Space platform,firewalls and event logs.According to Juniper, Altor has developed some of the industry's mostadvanced capabilities to address server security in the cloud,including a hypervisor-based firewall, on-board intrusion detection,network visibility, and monitoring and reporting for compliance. Itadds that Altor's solution enables security visibility, compliance andcontrol over the entire virtual machine infrastructure, so users canunderstand the applications, services and traffic being sent betweenvirtual machines.

Security is a major barrier to virtualization, says Kerravala. "Whenwe look at inhibitors for the broader use of virtualization, securityalways seems to come out at the top. Juniper will be able to take theAltor technology and have it interoperate with Juniper security. In alot of ways, Altor's very synergistic with what Juniper's doing."The size of the acquisition is also important, he adds. Juniper hasn'thad a lot of success integrating bigger companies, failing to executewell. "This is the kind of acquisition I've been accustomed to withJuniper ... relatively small in size ... companies with products thateither interoperate with Juniper or can be pretty rapidly integratedwith it," Kerravala says. 

Juniper has to be a lot more tactical about where its goes to market thancompetitors such as Cisco, says Kerravala. With $3 billion in revenues last year, thecompany must be more nimble, typified by its interest in VM security. "It makes a lot ofsense for Juniper to be in this market. Ultimately, this should be oneof their better acquisitions."