Volera to debut CDN management software
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Novell spinoff Volera will this week introduce a suite of applications and services that will help enterprise customers deploy, manage and administer their own content delivery services.
Volera's Velocity content delivery network (CDN) software will let customers manage existing Excelerator cache devices and provide the tools necessary to run streaming media as well as bill users for the delivery of content-rich applications.
Volera's CDN package could also help users that don't want to outsource their CDN, but need help designing and putting an internal CDN infrastructure in place.
Volera is also expected to announce that IBM and Nortel will support the Velocity package on its servers and caching devices. Volera declined to name other vendors it is working with to support Velocity.
IT buyers are planning to implement their own CDNs for security and performance reasons, but are also looking for help implementing their infrastructure, says Greg Howard, an analyst with HTRC Group. Internal CDNs can offer better security over a corporate WAN than using a public network and offer users more control than services managed by outside sources.
"Streaming media is the number one reason [corporate users] are using live and on-demand streaming for large files such as e-learning, followed by company meeting broadcasts and major announcements," Howard says.
The return on investment is a simpler way to train and keep people in touch without incurring huge travel costs. HTRC interviewed 232 IT managers or directors at companies with 500 or more employees in the U.S. for its study.
Volera's Velocity CDN software has three main components:
- Volera System Controller lets network managers set up and manage Volera's existing Excelerator software-based caches.
- Volera Content Controller software lets network professionals design and manage their CDNs.
- Volera Content Accountant software lets users measure CDN usage for billing purposes.
The Velocity CDN software will run on any Red Hat Linux 7.0-based server. Network administrators can choose to run all three components on one central server. Or users with offices in remote locations can also run Content Accountant on a separate server if they want to gather and report bandwidth-billing information for specific sites.
To support Velocity CDN software, users will need to upgrade their current Excelerator caching software to Excelerator 2.1. Volera is currently shipping Version 2.0 of Excelerator cache software, but plans to offer Excelerator 2.1 late this summer, or early fall - at the same time it releases Velocity.
Volera's Excelerator sits between a Web server farm and firewall. It can be networked with a Layer 4 to Layer 7 Web switch to divert traffic from Web servers for static, or streaming content that it holds in cache - speeding response time to end users and leaving Web servers free to process requests for dynamic content requests.
Greg Muscarella, marketing strategist for Volera, would not confirm or deny rumors that the company plans to offer a new version of Excelerator this fall that will also run on Linux. Excelerator now uses an embedded version of NetWare. But Volera is seeking a Linux software engineer to migrate its acceleration products onto a Linux platform, according to information on its site.
Users with Version 2.0 of Excelerator can upgrade to 2.1 without charge, but those with previous versions will incur a charge not yet determined, according to Muscarella.
In the cache and CDN management software arena, Volera will compete with CacheFlow, InfoLibria, Network Appliance, Inktomi and Cisco.
Velocity software will be available late this summer or early this fall. System Controller costs $28,000 per server license.
An additional client fee to manage individual caches has yet to be determined. Content Controller will cost $56,000, while an accompanying client license is also not yet priced. Content Accountant costs $56,000 per server. Each System Controller can manage as many as 2,000 caches.
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