6WIND Value-Proposition
for Network Security OEM Customers

Customer Case Studies:
- Integrated Security and Routing
- Multi-Services Security Gateways

6WINDGate™ Software Suites

New Challenges in the Network Security Market

As security became a serious IT market concern, a myriad of dedicated security products started to be deployed to counter potential threats from different sources:

•	Firewalls to protect LANs from outside attacks
•	Virtual Private Networking (VPN) to secure communications over insecure networks (e.g. the Internet)
•	Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) to monitor network communications and identify suspicious traffic
•	Etc.

As the market began to mature, a new class of network security equipment appeared under the name of Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances. Embedding several security functions in a single appliance, UTM appliances bring valuable end-customers benefits: • Coherent multi-layered security architecture compared to a collection of disparate point-products • CAPEX reduction with fewer products to purchase • OPEX reduction with a central configuration and management system • Deployment flexibility by using any of the available features without needing new appliances

The large success of UTM appliances (IDC forecasts UTM appliance market to grow continuously to $2.4B in 2009) is accompanied by a growing number of vendors (nearly doubling every year since 2004). In this context, security vendors will focus on expanding and enhancing their product lines. More than ever, product differentiation will be based on:

•	Security performance
•	Breadth of security features
•	Centralized management

The network security market is currently seeing a new paradigm shift caused by two main factors:

•	Increased competition from leading networking vendors who are incorporating security technologies in their infrastructure products to seek for differentiation and business expansion into the fast growing network security market
•	Need to secure new applications: Wireless LANs, Voice over IP, Storage, XML communications, etc.

Such new market evolutions are creating the need for a new breed of network equipment: multi-services gateways, combining the functionalities of an IP router, Ethernet switch, firewall/VPN appliance, VoIP gateway, and WLAN access point. They are often targeted at small and medium businesses or enterprise branch offices. These devices, designed ground-up to support multi-services, will still be optimized for specific applications.  For security providers, differentiation will still be centered around security applications.  However, they

can't realistically master all software components of multi-services systems, most of them being outside their core competence. Facing increasing development costs and time-to-market challenges in a highly competitive market, network security vendors are increasingly looking for external device software to gain access to mature technology, while keeping their internal R&D focused on delivering security value-add. Consequently multi-services gateway software is now a mix of proprietary technologies, open source and partner software, raising the following questions for equipment developers:

•	How to quickly and cost-effectively integrate all the software pieces coming from different sources?
•	How to reduce time-to market?
•	How to minimize development risks and costs?
•	How to get maximum performance benefits from leading-edge processors?
•	How to hide from end-users the management complexity of disparate software while providing coherent configuration mechanisms?

6WIND Value-Proposition for Network Security OEM Customers

Smooth Migration of Security Product Line

6WINDGate™ Linux-based networking software enables security OEMs to migrate their existing security appliance product line towards high-performance multi-services security gateways. It empowers them to:

•	Increase security performance by interfacing 6WINDGate™ software with hardware cryptographic accelerators or using it on advanced network processors
•	Integrate 6WINDGate™ comprehensive networking feature-set to evolve to multi-services security gateways
•	Manage security feature evolutions using 6WINDGate™ XML-based management framework for quicker feature integration and management consolidation

In short, security OEMs can easily build new generation multi-services security gateways by integrating their UTM features with 6WINDGate™ networking middleware ported on high-speed hardware.

Based on their product strategy, security OEMs can either achieve these product enhancements all at once or migrate smoothly, following a 3-step agenda. For instance, Firewall/VPN appliance vendors can increase security performance while UTM appliance providers can evolve their products to new generation multi-services security gateways.

6WINDGate™ software suites allow to build a complete range of security appliances, scalable in performance:

•	6WINDGate™ ADS for mono-processor architectures using software-based cryptography or hardware-based cryptography to scale in performance (in the range of several hundreds of Mbps), benefiting from cost-effective Bill Of Material (BOM). 6WINDGate™ ADS is validated on x86, FreeScale, ARM (Intel Xscale IXP42x) and MIPS64 (Cavium Networks OCTEON, Raza Microelectronics).
•	6WINDGate™ SDS for multi-core processors or network processors (Fast Path architectures) benefiting from the latest high performance hardware components (multi Gbps). 6WINDGate™ SDS is validated on MIPS64 (Cavium Networks OCTEON, Raza Microelectronics) and Intel Multi-Core.

Any specific development or customization made by customers is preserved when they upgrade from 6WINDGate™ ADS to 6WINDGate™ SDS. This enables OEMs to provide a consistent feature-set across all security products.

Software Ecosystem Management

6WINDGate™ smart software architecture enables OEMs to perform unmatched end-product customization. Reflecting software development best practices, 6WINDGate™ open software architecture enables an easy integration of additional software components:

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Application integration: It is possible to integrate proprietary, open source or partner application-level software with 6WINDGate™, in order to build innovative and differentiated applications. Some applications have already been tested and validated by 6WIND or its customers in the area of security (UTM, proxies, content filtering, anti-virus) and VoIP (SIP proxy).

•

Management integration: 6WINDGate™ eXtensible Management System (XMS) provides full-featured and highly-customizable configuration tools: industry-standard CLI, Web-based management, XML, SNMP. By separating system configuration and user interfaces, 6WINDGate™ XMS greatly reduces management development cycles. Instead of developing a complete management system from scratch, 6WIND customers can focus on consolidating management across various sub-systems as well as building advanced policy-based management. As a result, they are increasingly using this framework to integrate proprietary software, 6WINDGate™ functionalities and third party software components together. 6WIND customers can manage an entire partner ecosystem to quickly get to market with high-performing, full-featured multi-services security gateways.

Clear OEM benefits

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