At VMworld 2010 Just this past month Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware, gave a compelling keynote where he showed the future of IT as a service model where IT managers will be deploying services out of an app store like feature. He showed a demo of it during his keynote at VMworld 2010.

Well Juniper Networks takes his vision and makes it a reality in showing how users can actually us the Apple App Store to get apps to secure resources on the enterprise.

Today, Juniper Networks announced that the Juniper Networks Junos Pulse App, that enables anytime, anywhere secure remote access and connectivity to iPhone and iPod touch, is now available on the App Store.

With Junos Pulse, users can now enjoy secure, remote mobile access to corporate resources via full SSL VPN directly from their Apple iPhone or Apple iPod touch, regardless of where they are located – in the data center, in the office, in the cloud, or at other remote sites.

Juniper has been quietly since their big launch last year building out their new network model around convergence. It turned out to be pricisely the right vision as the enterprise and service providers continue to be disrupted by the consumer trend otherwise known as “the consumerization of IT”.

For some insight into Juniper Networks future read this post and listen to my interview with the founder Pradeep Sindhu.

Juniper has been doing very well with big carrier wins in mobile. Right now Juniper secures the majority of smartphone traffic in the U.S. and has the industry’s market-leading SSL VPN solution. This app extends Juniper’s footprint for SSL VPN, which is already deployed in tens of thousands of enterprises worldwide enabling more than 25 million end users to remotely and securely connect their devices to corporate networks.

The New Network Is The Cloud – Says Juniper Networks Founder Pradeep Sindhu

Cloud computing is an echo from the change that happened in the network from circuit switching to packet switching. It’s effectively the largest re-architecting of the information infrastructure since the birth of computing.

If you look at the fundamental reasons why cloud is happening it boils down to a few things. First, is the economics specifically the cap-x and op-x of information infrastructure networking being defined as networking, computing, and storage all inclusive.

Cap-x actually has dropped exponentially. Cap-x per unit capability has been dropping for the past few decades. Conversely, Op-x in fact has been rising. Because Cap-x has fell down, the infrastructure has become more physically distributed.

When you physically distribute information and information infrastructure it becomes more complicated to manage. As things get more complex you can’t automate them. If you can’t automate you have to use manual labor. If you use manual labor costs go up with inflation.

On one side you have cost going up with inflation and the other side costs are dropping exponentially. Essentially cloud is an attempt to re-centralize the heavy part of computing and storage. It is enabled by the network being “good enough”. So cloud could not be viable 10 years ago because the network wasn’t good enough.

First reason is economics, second reason is that technology of networking is a good enabler, and third reason is the desirers of end users. What end users want is access to information anytime anywhere.

The cloud based model allows them (end users) to do that (get information) more effectively rather than information being stored at end points. As an example, if I store information on my PC at home I won’t be able to have that information available when on the road unless I setup secure VPNs to my home and not many people know how to do that.

If the information is out in a datacenter somewhere and it’s replicated for the reasons for redundancy I can access that information from anywhere. That convenience is a big factor.

These three factors tell us that the information infrastructure will be re-architected. The model of computing is going to change from the model that has been with us for the past 10 years – e.g. distributed computing model with heavy PCs. That model will evolve to a model where the master copy of information and content sits out in the cloud in a datacenter somewhere. Information will get cached on demand progressively including on the end user device.

This new model is very different from the old model in which all the information was sitting at the end point. The primary objective of this new model is that it’s more efficient and it makes things simpler for end users.

My interview with Juniper Networks at VMworld 2010 on SiliconANGLE.tv theCube. Abner Germanow, Director of Enterprise Marketing at Juniper Networks, joins Stuart Miniman, Wikibon Senior Analyst, and John Furrier of SiliconANGLE to talk networking and the challenges and opportunities created by virtualization.

Here is the blog post from Juniper from Brendan Lewis

Great news today for those of you with an Apple iPhone or Apple iPod touch who have been waiting for the Junos Pulse network client – it’s now live in the iTunes App Store!

With Junos Pulse, users can now enjoy secure, remote mobile access to corporate resources via full SSL VPN directly from their Apple iPhone or Apple iPod touch, regardless of where they are located – in the data center, in the office, in the cloud, or at other remote sites.

We’ve got a great demo video outlining all the features of Junos Pulse 1.0, but here’s a quick rundown:

* SSL VPN connectivity using ESP or SSL transport mode to the Juniper Networks SA Series SSL VPN Appliances
* Connects to one SA Series gateway at a time while allowing you to store information for multiple gateways in Configurations for later use
* Automatically reconnects to the SA Series SSL VPN Appliance upon network changes (3G to Wi-Fi, or vice-versa), temporary network disruptions, or when your iPhone or iPod touch device wakes up from sleep
* Option to send Logs to IT Support via Email for troubleshooting and assistance

A few clerical things to know before you download Junos Pulse:

* Your iPhone or iPod Touch must be updated to iOS 4.1 or later
* Your company must be using a Juniper Networks SA Series SSL VPN Appliance running version 6.4 or later

Junos Pulse supporting the Apple iPhone and iPod touch is in addition to the VPN capabilities Junos Pulse already delivers for Microsoft Windows Mobile and Nokia Symbian based smartphones and other intelligent mobile devices. We’ll keep you posted on when the Junos Pulse client will be available on additional mobile operating systems, too.

In the meantime, please give us your feedback. Feel free to leave a comment here, or on Twitter.