Juniper Networks today announced a new platform targeting carrier-provided network-based SSL VPN services.

The Secure Access (SA) 6000 SP is being marketed as an easy way for carriers to offer secured services such as remote and extranet access, disaster recovery and Intranet LAN security services to their enterprise customers. A key ingredient in the effort is the ability to offer end-to-end virtualization.

“We’re virtualizing everything at the network layer, but also the application layer and management,” said Vivian Ganitsky, director of product management for the Juniper Networks Secure Access appliances group. Using software, dubbed the Instant Virtual System, carriers can create 255 virtual SSL VPN gateways on a single SA 6000 SP appliance with each gateway representing a customer.

For customers, secured service can be delivered without client software. By hosting the service, carriers also remove other issues, Ganitsky said. “Because everything is happening at the application layer, there are no network address translation issues,” she said. “Today we’ve had several successful deployments of the CPE solutions, but there are a host of reasons that service providers want to offer a hosted solution.”

Key among them is a healthy margin. Additionally, carriers are finding that they can package SSL VPN hosted services as part of a disaster recovery bundle, which is particularly enticing for smaller businesses, said Vaishali Ghiya, senior product manager for Juniper,

“Historically most emerging services start out as dedicated offerings,” she said. “And that’s exactly the trend we see with SSL VPN. The hosted version now allows service providers to target the small and medium business market.”