LANDesk Software (you know, the Avocent company) unveiled an appliance yesterday that we all might should've seen coming. Remember back during the early part of this century, when a company called Neoteris (the Jim Clark company) came up with this thing called the SSL VPN appliance? Turns out the SSL VPN appliance was a pretty good idea. The SSL VPN made secure remote access super easy for users, who needed onl LANDesk Software (you know, the Avocent company) unveiled an appliance yesterday that we all might should’ve seen coming. Remember back during the early part of this century, when a company called Neoteris (the Jim Clark company) came up with this thing called the SSL VPN appliance? Turns out the SSL VPN appliance was a pretty good idea. The SSL VPN made secure remote access super easy for users, who needed only a Web browser to create an encrypted connection, and it could apply granular access control policies to each user, showing them only the applications and network resources they were entitled to use. The newfangled appliance went over big with customers, Neoteris soon owned the lion’s share of a growing market, and before long Jim Clark and his venture backers sold the company to Juniper, where the Neoteris policy engine helped give birth to a general purpose NAC solution. OK, long story. So what does Neoteris have to do with LANDesk? Well, the new LANDesk Management Gateway Appliance, announced today and shipping November 15, is essentially a special-purpose SSL VPN appliance for managing remote devices. Instead of creating a secure link with a user’s browser, it creates a secure link with the LANDesk management agent running on the remote desktop or laptop. Instead of connecting the user with e-mail, CRM, ERP, and network shares, it connects the LANDesk agent with the various components of the LANDesk Management Suite and LANDesk Security Suite. The upshot: Whenever a remote user connects to the Internet, the management agent connects with LANDesk’s management and security software for updates, patches, vulnerability scans, and so on, also extending LANDesk’s asset management, software license monitoring, and configuration management to the remote device. Just as if the desktop or laptop were on the company LAN. Who knows, maybe LANDesk will drop a policy engine in there someday. Nathan McLain, product manager in LANDesk’s systems management solutions group, did say the company is looking into building a gateway appliance to competitors’ management solutions. Meanwhile, the LANDesk Management Gateway Appliance is aimed at existing LANDesk customers only. Priced at $3,000 (MSRP), the 1U appliance supports only Windows clients out of the gate (GA is November 15). Support for Mac and Linux clients (Red Hat, Suse, and Ubuntu) will be available in Q1 2008. Technology Industry