Nortel joins ranks of VPN group
Vendor signs up to Enterprise Virtual Private Network User's Association to gain greater acceptance of its products
Nortel Networks has joined the Enterprise Virtual Private Network (VPN) User's Association (EVUA) to gain greater acceptance of its products.
The vendor is looking to counter the success of Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based networks, which run across older types of network.
"We have been shipping IP VPNs with our Contivity product since 1997 or 1998," said Tim Hubbard, director of next-generation networks technical marketing at Nortel.
"We've been offering VPNs through our Passport product since 1996. Membership of the EVUA allows us to find out what customers want, rather than tell them MPLS is the answer to everything," he added, alluding to rival vendors' sales techniques.
MPLS offerings, most notably those offered by Cisco, have recently dominated the market, seemingly at the expense of alternative IP Security (IPsec) and Secure Socket Layer (SSL)-based VPNs, which have more success outside Europe.
"Cisco has been able to create a hype around MPLS and enterprises are comfortable running it over Frame Relay and private lines," said Peter Hall, Ovum research director.
"We are projecting MPLS as a strong technology in Europe, but it should be noted that IPsec-based VPNs are strong in North America and will continue to be."
Hall warned that some companies were using MPLS when they should be looking at alternatives.
"It's probably fair to say that Nortel has seen Cisco's march in this area create success for it," he said. "But certainly there is an extent to which companies are specifying MPLS when they don't need it."
He added that there is a trend in Europe towards buying managed services instead of do-it-yourself VPNs, which are more popular in the US.
The next round of VPN technology will rely more on IP- and MPLS-based VPNs, as the growth of web access and xDSL connection in particular make IPsec and SSL-encrypted VPNs more effective, said Hall.
Nortel joins Hewlett-Packard, Accenture, Unisys, Nokia Business Infrastructure and Fujitsu Services in EVUA.