VPN Client Support

I just wanted to make my voice heard as well.  My work only allows Juniper to connect to the VPN. When I asked my IT department if there was any way around it using Windows' VPN, they just told me all the platforms Juniper was supported (not surprisingly, basically everything except Windows RT). 

Here's to hoping we get something at some point.

I just discovered this unfortunate official information from Juniper.  Per Kita at forums.juniper.net:

"Currently, this is not on the roadmap for 2013. I would suggest reaching out to your Juniper account team to file an enhancement request for Windows RT support"

http://forums.juniper.net/t5/SSL-VPN/Delivery-Date-for-Junos-Pulse-App-in-Windows-Store/m-p/190813

Actually it was stated by a Microsoft expert in this thread that MS has NOT released the APIs for VPN client connectivity specifically.

If Microsoft wanted to make this happen, it would happen, period.

Enterprises are not buying up Surface Pro, why would they, the Surface Pro is a laptop replacement, not a solution for tablet placement.  And as a laptop it is far too limiting to fill corporate needs.  My enterprise is placing HP Elite Ultralights that have a much larger screen, get 7+ hours of battery, ports galor, dockable, etc.  Enterprises also need access to harddrives, memory, nics, even video cards, none of which a Surface Pro can allow.

Now take a Surface RT and place that as either a thin client or a tablet.  It is far more productive a device then an iPad, IE10 renders corporate sites very well, mouse use for VNC/RDP is flawless, Office (needs Outlook but I hear its coming) etc.  BUT.... almost no real VPN support other then what is baked into the desktop part of the OS.  Its a deal breaker, makes it useless, pointless, a waste of corporate money when both iPad and Android have VPN apps from most major vendors.

As a complete side note, they also need to plug in Active Directory support.  There is zero technical reason that this is not in there already other then they compiled Home instead of Pro version of W8.

I've been saying a lot of this in these threads and other forums.

In my opinion Microsoft needlessly artificially limited Windows on ARM. The signing requirements on any non-store app/executable is foolish, shortsighted, and a big reason RT isn't working out well so far. Without that requirement Cisco and the others could have easily just recompiled their VPN clients for ARM. It's the same network stack. Done. This thread probably wouldn't exist.

To continue the side note:

If Microsoft won't open up Windows RT, then they really need to consider releasing an ARM compiled version of Windows 8 Pro for those like me that want more than a stripped-down artificially limited consumer OS on their ARM PCs. AD support would be great for business. The ability for businesses to recompile their desktop software to run on ARM would be great. Easy VPN support. Things like the Surface aren't just a tablet, they are also a small laptop, so there is no reason to restrict the desktop like they've done. If I had wanted an ipad I could have bought one. If Windows on ARM has a future it needs to be more like Windows 8, not what RT currently is. That's my opinion of course, but it seems like most of the OEMs agree.

to make things clear: the Samsung ativ tab has the same vpn Support as every other rt device. there is no additional Software preinstalled. See the following support request:

https://www.facebook.com/samsungsupport/posts/10151087075766213

Samsung did officially stop producing rt devices, especially the ativ tab was taken of the marked.

to get vpn Support it seems to be sufficient to compile the normal vpn apps for arm-cpus and jailbreak the device.

this post was written on a Samsung ativ tab (sorry for typos, tab is set to german and not correcting english text)

Edit: corrections and added link

Actually if you read the very first post in this thread, that's how I started the discussion.

However, turns out that product never came to being in the United States, and has been put on indefinite hold (from what I hear) outside the US because Samsung may not want to make the investment in RT. If you see, the only tablets they launched here in the US are Win8 Pro.

That said, Samsung on their Android tabs did custom development enabling JunOS Pulse support before the APIs were available from Google in the most current release of SW, so Samsung definitely has a good grasp on developing/marketing to the business user.

I was hoping Microsoft would be the same.