14 DAY TRIAL // At just a day after the free Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010 Evaluation Version went live on the Microsoft Download Center, Microsoft announced that it had released UAG 2010 to manufacturing. Although officially launched concomitantly at the start of December 2009, Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 (TMG) and Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010 (UAG) were divided in terms of availability. For UAG 2010, Microsoft promised that customers would be able to purchase the solution as well as download evaluation bits in the second half of December. In this regard, the software giant managed to live up to its promise.
UAG is designed as the evolution of Microsoft’s Intelligent Application Gateway. Leveraging UAG, organizations will be able to permit remote access to their network through either managed and unmanaged PCs, but also through mobile devices. Microsoft indicates that UAG is capable of taking into account a variety of resources associated with a corporate network, from applications to end user devices health state, but also end user identity.
“Part of our Business Ready Strategy, Forefront UAG enables organizations to give employees (and trusted partners and vendors) secure remote access to corporate resources. With its focus on application intelligence and granular access control, UAG is an ideal solution all of your remote access needs that provides centralized management and policy control across all users, devices, and network resources,” revealed a Forefront team representative.
Customers that want to see what the successor of Intelligent Application Gateway brings to the table can do so by downloading and testing the free evaluation version of UAG 2010. Microsoft is also inviting companies to explore scenarios in which UAG is leveraged in concert with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in order to provide remote connectivity via DirectAccess.
“While UAG provides a variety of connectivity options, such web publishing and SSL VPN tunnels, one of the best new features is UAG’s support and enhancements for Windows DirectAccess (DA). DA is the future of remote access allowing for seamless, always-on connectivity. Always-on keeps users happy as they are continually productive, but it also keeps administrators content as users are “always-managed.” UAG helps make DA deployments simpler, more extensible and easier to scale,” the Forefront team member added.
Unified Access Gateway 2010 is available for download here.