Funk Software was a US-based company that was acquired by

Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and markets networking products, including routers, switches, network management software, network security products, ...

in 2005 for

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

122 million. The company was founded in 1982 by Paul Funk, and was headquartered in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

. The company first became well known in the late 80's for its product Sideways, which allowed users to print wide spreadsheets on dot matrix printers. Dot matrix printing was the primary printing technology at that time. Funk Software later became a provider of network access security solutions for networks of any size, from enterprise to operator, wired or wireless. The company's products were security related and they were grouped as a family of

RADIUS In classical geometry, a radius ( : radii) of a circle or sphere is any of the line segments from its center to its perimeter, and in more modern usage, it is also their length. The name comes from the latin ''radius'', meaning ray but also the ...

/AAA and

WLAN A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building ...

security products. These types of network security products allow an organization to enforce a uniform security policy across all network access methods, including WLAN, remote/

VPN A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...

, dial, and identity-based (wired

802.1X IEEE 802.1X is an IEEE Standard for port-based Network Access Control (PNAC). It is part of the IEEE 802.1 group of networking protocols. It provides an authentication mechanism to devices wishing to attach to a Local area network, LAN or Wireless ...

- also referred to as a supplicant based authentication system) - with the performance and reliability to handle any traffic load, and with full support for any network infrastructure. Funk Software's customers included many of the world's largest corporations, institutions, telecommunications carriers, and internet service providers (ISPs); its products are licensed or resold by numerous leading manufacturers of Internet hardware and software. One of the leading products was OAC - Odyssey Access Client, which is still used today, branded as a Juniper Networks Product UAC - User Access Client. In 2014,

sold off the business unit that was responsible for the legacy Funk Software enterprise products to New York-base
Siris Capital
Siris Capital created a new company and named i
Pulse Secure, LLC
with its headquarters in

San Jose, CA San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popu ...

. Steel-Belted Radius (SBR) Enterprise and Global Enterprise are still being sold under the new company's brand. It was announced that Pulse Secure will EOL SBR Enterprise and Global Enterprise as of December 31, 2020. Steel-Belted Radius Carrier Edition is still being sold by Juniper Networks. The Odyssey Access Client (OAC) has been EOL'd (End of Life) as of December 31, 2017. Several Funk Software employees remain with Pulse Secure and Juniper Networks as of 2020.

References

Juniper Networks Defunct companies based in Massachusetts Software companies established in 1982 Companies disestablished in 2005 1982 establishments in Massachusetts {{US-software-company-stub

See also

References