Microsoft Closes Acquisition and Offers Whale of a Deal

Microsoft closed its acquisition of Whale Communications to make Whale Communications a wholly owned subsidiary. The acquisition brings Microsoft new security offerings  designed for small, medium, and large businesses that help provide SSL-based remote access, access controls, and deep content inspection. 

"Whale is a technology leader in the SSL VPN and Web application firewall markets and is widely considered to be best-of-breed in the industry," said Bob Kelly, general manager of Infrastructure Marketing at Microsoft. "The company distinguished itself in the marketplace with its early focus on application-level security, enabling policy enforcement down to the application level. In addition, the fact that their solutions are Windows-based enables us to deliver a high level of native integration with Microsoft technologies, such as Windows Active Directory, authentication services and Microsoft applications."

Microsoft said that through December 31, 2006, the company will offer 25 percent off the list price of the Whale Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG) and any add-on modules. IAG includes Microsoft ISA Server and according to Kelly is best suited for "customers that need browser-based clientless access, more granular policy and control with strong end point security verification, and broader access for unmanaged PCs or mobile devices on unknown or un-trusted networks." Kelly added that Whale’s Application Optimizers provide the ability to customize policies and content inspection for Microsoft applications as well as third-party customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and collaboration platforms.

Microsoft plans to integrate Whale technologies directly into the next version of ISA Server (after ISA Server 2006), which the company plans to release sometime shortly after it releases the next version of Windows Server, currently codenamed "Longhorn."