Microsoft announces its next-generation secure remote access solution, the Forefront Unified Access Gateway

LAS VEGAS, Nevada.  - April 29, 2008 --  At the Interop conference today, Microsoft announced its next-generation secure remote access gateway product, Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG), available in the first half of 2009. Forefront Unified Access Gateway is the evolution of Microsoft's current solution, Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG 2007), and moves the successful product under the Forefront brand.  UAG will bring new features and functionality to make remote access easier than ever for all users and IT professionals.          
In addition to investing strongly in its next-generation solutions, Microsoft is continuing to provide increased customer value with the products in the market today by launching an updated SharePoint Optimizer, providing enhanced functionality and manageability for secure remote access to SharePoint by all mobile users.

Built on Windows Server 2008, UAG is designed to offer one solution to fit all remote access needs through centralized management and policy control across all users, devices, and network resources.  More details about the features in Forefront UAG will be available with a public beta scheduled for later this calendar year.  Microsoft will provide an easy product and licensing upgrade path from IAG 2007 or customers using ISA 2006 for remote access to Forefront UAG, and IAG customers that have or buy Microsoft Software Assurance can be confident of receiving strong value with Forefront UAG. 

Forefront UAG will add further features to a comprehensive end point security assessment and cache cleanup, which is tailored to the specific application and access environment.  Tightly integrated with Microsoft Network Access Protection, this ensures only secure devices and authenticated users can access network resources and that no data is compromised during or after the sessions.

 Forefront UAG adds more ease of use with wizard driven configuration, easy to use policies and highly intuitive user experience.  This solution ensures a fast and easy deployment allowing employees, partners and vendors simple and secure access, via customized and dynamic user portals.  Ongoing management and control is simplified via updates to application and endpoint policies.

The IAG pioneered the concept of Application Intelligence, or the ability to control what resources are presented to the user, and transparently enforcing policies based on a deep understanding of how an application functions.  Forefront UAG builds on the current competitive differentiation around application intelligence, with broad application support for Microsoft and third party applications, granular access controls, and customizable application protection through Application Optimizers.

Microsoft latest Application Optimizers is an updated SharePoint Optimizer for the IAG 2007, providing enhanced functionality and performance for remote access to SharePoint by all mobile users.  The updated IAG 2007 SharePoint Optimizer leverages SharePoint Alternate Access Mapping (AAM) to provide an easier, more secure and productive user experience when accessing SharePoint remotely.

With this new Optimizer, IAG provides more seamless access to the complete functionality of SharePoint, including Explorer View, Datasheet View, integrating InfoPath forms and access to multiple office documents from multiple server locations, without the overhead and security risks associated with tunneling and application rewriting.

Microsoft's IAG 2007 already provides the easiest to use and manage remote access to SharePoint today, as it is the only complete remote access solution to integrate its user experience into SharePoint, allowing organizations to keep a simple, one-portal, user experience for employees accessing applications internally or externally. The IAG 2007 SharePoint Optimizer will be available for download in May.