Juniper’s Banner Week at VMworld: Crowded Booth, Cloud Security Product Accolades & Survey

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For an inaugural sponsorship of VMworld, Juniper’s participation couldn’t have received a more enthusiastic welcome. QFabric, Junos Pulse, SA Series, SRX and vGW well on display in a 20x20 exhibition space that at times was so packed it seemed as though all 22K show registrants had made their way there.

“I love Juniper” and “it’s so great that you guys are here” were not uncommon substitutes to hellos from customers thrilled to see a familiar vendor at their beloved conference. For those who haven’t experienced VMworld, attendees are as devoted as they are earnest and astute about finding out “what’s new”. And for our part we were ready to oblige.

Our vGW v5.0 made its debut at VMworld so attendees inquiring about virtualization security got an early peek at the market’s most innovative hypervisor-based security solution which now features integrated anti-virus protection. Although vGW 5.0 won’t be generally available until October it has already racked up some notable recognition at the show as a finalist in the Best of VMworld awards for Security and Compliance for Virtualization and as one of CRN’s Hot 15 Products for VMworld.

It stands to reason that a product which packages firewall, intrusion detection, anti-virus protection, compliance enforcement and hypervisor monitoring would garner a lot of show attention -  (Security and compliance were clearly top of mind at the show with a lot of keynotes and breakout sessions not to mention product announcement focused on the topics)

This is why we thought it important to conduct a show floor survey highlighting security practices and solutions focus. This year’s survey builds on the findings from last year’s survey conducted with Altor Networks, which you can read here.

Survey findings showed that organizations are rapidly moving critical workloads to virtual machines with 83% of respondents saying that it is 75% or more likely that they will do so in the next 12 months. As critical information is moved to virtual environments, security is top of mind with 77% agreeing it’s a critical concern.

Consequently, organizations are looking for security solutions that address the unique challenges presented by the virtual environment. Along with a stateful firewall, which 80% of respondents see as a critical feature, respondents identified integrated defenses, including antivirus and IDS as essential protections, with 83% saying it’s a must. This trend is part of a larger push by organizations to implement a wide array of virtualization-specific security solutions. On that note, 92% or respondents said they plan to or have deployed security products for their virtualized network, such as NAC and SSL VPN.

These findings signal the growing need for a comprehensive security platform developed for virtualization that goes beyond traditional security thinking and looks at cloud computing protection holistically. This was the focus of the Juniper session on The New Network and it’s how Juniper is winning hearts and minds around enabling secure cloud computing.