Napera and Microsoft

Today Napera is at the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 launch in sunny Los Angeles. There is lots of activity and announcements surrounding Microsoft’s NAP architecture. As I mentioned last week, this morning we announced our partnership with Microsoft and initial details of how Napera is directly integrating with the Microsoft NAP architecture.

To clarify for technical readers: A number of companies are supporting the Windows SHA and SHV API’s Microsoft has published for the NAP architecture. Napera is going far beyond that by integrating directly with NAP at the network and policy level. In short, Napera products will allow companies to deploy NAP immediately, leveraging the NAP agent in Windows Vista and XP SP3. Customers will be able to check and enforce health using our product, and deployment of Windows Server 2008 is optional. Our goal is to make NAP easier to deploy, use, and support as part of the process of ensuring a healthy network. This goes far beyond simple NAP support, and I believe Napera is the only company taking this deep integration approach that is building a network health product for the SME customer.

Microsoft’s new approach to openness and interoperability via their protocol licensing program has made this integration possible. As a result of this open approach and the dominance of Microsoft on the desktop, we are confident that NAP is on track to be the successful architecture for ensuring the health of Windows networks.