"I'd say the market turned the corner in the second half of 2003," said Sarah Daniels, vice president of marketing and product management for Aventail. "We've increased sales, lead generation and the number of resellers talking to us about our product."
Nortel, which has been selling its product for a little more than a year, says it has seen a spike in sales in the past three or four months.
"Customers have moved from the experimental phase, where they're only deploying the technology in small pockets, to deploying it in live networks," said Kyle Klassen, director of security solutions and marketing for Nortel.
Because SSL VPNs enable access from virtually any Web browser, they're a natural fit for remote access and extranet applications. For most Web-based applications, users don't have to use a client, making it much easier to give any employee or partner access to the network.
By contrast, IPSec VPNs require the installation and configuration of special software on all clients and can be clunky when it comes to remote access. It often has interoperability issues that can leave many road warriors frustrated and stranded without access to critical network information.
"What we found is that IPSec VPNs are fantastic for site-to-site or branch office connectivity," said Doug Torre, director of networking and telecommunications for Catholic Health System. Torre has been using NetScreen's SSL VPN solution for almost two years.
"But when you use IPsec for remote access, it's just too cumbersome. The doctors in our group just wanted to pull up a browser and start accessing the network, just like they would if they were buying something on Amazon or trading stocks on the Internet," he said.
SSL's ease of use often translates into big savings for companies using the technology for remote access. Frost & Sullivan, a market research firm, estimates that the average cost per user drops to between US$60 (AU$78) and US$220 when using an SSL remote access VPNs versus US$150 to US$300 per user when using an IPSec VPN.
"The total cost of ownership is much lower for SSL VPNS, because you don't have to pre-configure every PC," said Jason Wright, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan. "You also don't have all of the support issues to deal with."
Torre agrees. He said that the SSL VPNs are so easy to use that the company's support issues disappeared literally overnight when they started using SSL VPNs. Consequently, the SSL VPN hardware paid for itself in a matter of months.
"We still use Cisco [Systems' networking products] for site-to-site IPSec VPNs," he said. "But it's really a no-brainer to use SSL for remote access."
SSL's bright future
Financial and industry analysts are already projecting high growth in this market during the next year. Last week, Erik Suppiger, an analyst at Pacific Growth Equities, raised his earnings estimate for NetScreen, which completed its acquisition of SSL networking company Neoteris in November.
This week, he increased his expectations for networking gear maker F5 Networks, which announced its acquisition of SSL VPN company uRoam in July.
Industry analysts are also bullish on SSL VPN technology. According to Frost & Sullivan, the market for the technology grew 360 percent last year, with sales jumping from $20 million in 2002 to $90 million.
The market research firm expects that 2003 figure to more than double to $202 million this year. And by 2006, it expects sales to exceed $500 million.
But to put this growth into perspective, IPsec VPNs still outpace SSL VPNs in terms of revenue. Frost & Sullivan estimates that worldwide sales for IPsec VPN products reached $1.8 billion in 2002 and is likely to total $2.4 billion in 2003.
10%
8%
