Whale Communications, headquartered in Fort Lee, New Jersey, was formed in 1998 as a start-up and specializes in secure remote access for internal organizations’ networks. The competitors include Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Aventail, and Citrix Systems.

This is not the first time Whale is in the news with Microsoft. On December last year, Whale said that it was partnering with Microsoft to combine Microsoft’s Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server with Whale’s Intelligent Application Gateway.

Microsoft has made a number security-related acquisitions in recent months. Next month, the software giant will start selling Windows OneCare Live, a consumer antivirus product.