Aventail Enhances SSL Product

SEATTLE -- Aventail Corporation (www.aventail.com), the leading provider of SSL VPN appliances and services, today introduced the seventh generation of the award-winning Aventail® Anywhere Secure Access Policy (ASAP(TM)) Platform. As the power behind the Aventail EX-1500(TM) appliance, ASAP 7.0 now supports the industry's only SSL VPN appliance with integrated high availability (HA). The new ASAP 7.0 release also advances Aventail's support for complex enterprise environments and extends the company's leadership in remote access policy management. With the broadest set of access options, the most expansive multi-platform support, and a scalable policy platform, ASAP 7.0 further extends Aventail's leadership in delivering secure anywhere remote access. Available in November, all new ASAP 7.0 features are included in Aventail's EX-1500 SSL VPN base price at no additional cost.

"As an EX-1500 customer, we continue to be impressed by Aventail's commitment to pioneering major advancements in the SSL VPN industry," said Michael Fahey, director of information services for Adaptis, Inc., a leading provider of value-added services for managed Medicaid health plans. "With ASAP 7.0, we can scale secure remote access to even more users at lower costs and with less infrastructure, while also ensuring corporate security policies are enforced."

"Worldwide, corporations are in a dilemma with remote access: On one hand, they're being asked to do more with less, shrink infrastructure, and reduce their costs," said Chris Hopen, CTO of Aventail Corporation. "And on the other hand, they're being asked to expose more critical network resources to an ever-growing variety of remote employees, business partners, and devices without jeopardizing security."

Hopen continued, "Powered by ASAP 7.0, our leading EX-1500 SSL VPN appliance and managed service offerings eliminate this dilemma and completely address the range of remote access needs by global organizations. We're empowering IT to inexpensively support and intuitively secure the broadest range of remote access use cases. We're ensuring integrated high availability without the need to purchase expensive third-party load balancers. And, we're delivering a stronger end-user experience, which improves productivity and decreases overall support costs for remote access."

"As an Aventail reseller, we're seeing a lot of interest and demand for the Aventail EX-1500 SSL VPN appliance," said Joseph Dell, CTO of Vigilar, a comprehensive information security solution provider. "Aventail's focus on SSL VPNs and commitment to creating an outstanding experience for both end-users and IT administrators surpasses all VPN alternatives. With ASAP 7.0, Aventail is delivering on its promise to both channel partners and customers to deliver world-class products that continue to raise the competitive bar in the SSL VPN space."

New and Enhanced ASAP 7.0 Features

"With ASAP 7.0, Aventail once again demonstrates its strategic excellence in SSL VPN product innovation," said Zeus Kerravala, vice president of Enterprise Infrastructure for The Yankee Group. "The company continues to execute on its SSL VPN product and managed service offerings, helping Aventail further establish itself as the clear #1 SSL VPN vendor."

The Aventail EX-1500 SSL VPN appliance and managed service offerings are powered by the award-winning Aventail ASAP platform. Pricing for the Aventail EX-1500 appliance is based on concurrent users and begins at $13,995 (MSRP). Standard features of the EX-1500 appliance include clientless support for Web applications, advanced policy management, integrated high availability, and support for digital certificates. Customers can be up and running with Aventail's standard features, plus optional support for thin- and thick- client/server applications for under $19,000.

The Aventail EX-1500-based managed service appliances start at $2,000 per month (MSRP), and include all of the EX-1500 standard features. Aventail supports Windows, Pocket PC (Windows Mobile), Macintosh, and UNIX and interoperates with any Web browser.

In a separate release:

Aventail Corporation (www.aventail.com ), the leading growing provider of SSL VPN appliances and services, today announced it has been awarded the Frost & Sullivan 2003 Market Penetration Award in recognition of its marketshare growth in the global SSL VPN industry. In the report entitled, "World SSL VPN Products Market," for 1H03 Frost & Sullivan highlights that since Aventail began shipping the EX-1500 appliance in January 2003, the company has aggressively grown its appliance marketshare at a faster pace vs. all competitors.

"Other companies that have competed in the SSL VPN product market for two years have not been able to achieve the level of success that Aventail has reached in six months," said report author Jason Wright, Frost & Sullivan industry analyst of security technologies. "In a short time, Aventail has leveraged its experience in the managed services side of the market to instantly introduce a well-developed appliance, going from 0 to 10 marketshare points in the SSL VPN product market. This increase is by far the largest marketshare increase accomplished in the SSL VPN market to date." Wright continued, "Aventail's EX-1500 appliance has been well received by the marketplace. The company also has a distinct advantage of winning service provider deals and has already established relationships with ANXeBusiness, AT&T, Bell Canada, Infonet, IBM Global Services and Netifice. Thus far, major service providers have refused to partner with anyone except Aventail."

"In a rapidly growing market, we are very pleased to be moving faster than all our competitors and to be eating into their existing marketshare," said Evan Kaplan, CEO and founder of Aventail. "With both lines of our business, we focus on leading the industry in product innovation, which continues to help us maintain our overall SSL VPN marketshare in appliances and services."

Kaplan continued, "This award not only validates the value of our EX-1500 SSL VPN appliance, but also our ability to attract key VARs, systems integrators, service providers, and consultants to quickly grow our appliance business. Through continued investment in technology, partners, and our customers, we expect to grow at an even faster pace to meet the increasing demands of today's mobile workforce." In the report, Frost & Sullivan cites Aventail as an SSL VPN industry veteran, offering the first SSL VPN technology 1996. While the report did not include revenues for Aventail's profitable SSL VPN managed services business, it highlights the company's ongoing success at being the vendor of choice for service providers selling SSL VPN appliances as a service. Frost & Sullivan expects Aventail to generate considerable competitive advantages as the list of leading service providers continues to grow, while that of the competition stalls.

Aventail Corp.