Altor Strengthens Juniper's Virtualization Security: Page 2 of 2

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."