Combined with their DxOdyssey software, which provides a replacement for VPNs to the cloud, DxConnect broadens the use case to address remote privilege user access.

DH2i is announcing the general availability of their DxConnect network security software for integrated Zero Trust connectivity. It extends the functionality of their DxOdyssey software to allow for secure privileged user access to the cloud in Edge, multi-cloud and Internet of Things environments.

Last year, DH2i, which makes container management software, adapted its core Smart Availability technology, which makes workloads portable from any host to any host, to address a key issue in software-defined networking security. They introduced their new DxOdyssey software as a replacement for VPNs to the cloud, to address a pain point with their original solution when it was extended beyond the customer’s own security infrastructure to the cloud. DxOdyssey dynamically deploys perimeter security through a Software-Defined Perimeter, to provide Zero Trust network connectivity between on-premises sites and multi-cloud environments.

“Now DxConnect lets us address a part of the picture that we didn’t have before,” said Don Boxley, DH2i’s CEO and Co-Founder, DH2i. “We are excited because now we have a real integrated story for our customers around No Trust Connectivity. With DxOdyssey, our focus was limited to replacing legacy VPN. With this, we can support their privileged user access and cloud native access needs – two of the most common needs for large organizations. We can now have a much broader conversation.”

Boxley described DxConnect and DxOdyssey as peers, that will be sold together, to fill out the Zero Trust story.

“They do different things,” he said. “Together they create the solution. You can’t do a service mesh without both of them. In a client-server model, DXOdyssey is the gateway and DXConnect is the client.”

The need for secure privileged user access through secure cloud-native microservice connections is expanding because of the growth of multi-cloud environments and the inability of legacy connectivity and security approaches like VPNs to address these modern environments. The result has been complex setup and management, and slow and unreliable connections.

“VPNs use a traditional ‘castle-moat’ model that was made for T1 lines,” Boxley said. “Once remote users get inside your castle, they can go anywhere they want. We address this by building secure tunnels between containers with light programmic overhead, to connect to specific cloud applications without the need for a VPN. This improves network security while providing the scalability needed by DevOps, IoT, containers and Edge workloads.” The application-level micro-tunnels give network admins and developers the ability to create micro-perimeters to segment by application, not by network. This provides secure ‘from any host, to any host, anywhere’ application data communications with application-level DTLS encrypted micro tunnels and Public Key Authentication.

DxConnect also opens up APIs that run on any Linux or Windows host. for better integrations, analytics, visibility and compliance.

“We’ve opened up our API with a matchmaking service who makes sure people talking on the tunnels are authorized to do that, so  they can verify remote users are using the right device,” Boxley said. “Open APIs allow for the integration of the solution.”

Boxlety said that since DxOdyssey came out late last year, they have been doing a lot of Proof-of-Concepts with very large companies. He believes that DxConnect’s expansion of customer use cases beyond secure VPN will make the combined appeal of Connect and Odyssey much more attractive.

“There is a movement underway from the traditional VPN drawbridge approach to Zero Trust, and this takes time,” he said. “Hybrid multi-cloud connectivity still meets with resistance because of current solutions people are using to solve these problems. With Odyssey, the customer response was that we were using Cisco or some network vendor and had to cobble something together,” he indicated. “There was a lot more resistance to change. This is more green fields. We know customers aren’t happy with that they are doing around privileged user management. There are too many security holes. And this is something that networking teams haven’t even been looking at. They leave it up to developers. So we can now have this conversation with the development teams.”

Boxley said that DH2i’s channel partners can now have renewed conversations with customers and prospects about this expanded solution.

“From a channel standpoint, partners can go back to accounts with this additional component, and talk about how it can help with management of their Edge devices,” he said. “Before the only use case was tackling the legacy VPN model. Now this goes after the remote user and cloud native application developer, areas where the pain level is much higher.”