CacheFlow today will announce a new line of caching devices designed to offer ISPs the capability to handle carrier-class traffic loads by adding more processors, memory and disk drives.
Caching devices store previously downloaded material from the Internet, a process that reduces network traffic and improves performance when users request the same material again.
CacheFlow's rack-mountable Series 5000 will be available June 30 with prices starting at $39,950. Series 5000 is the first caching appliance that can scale to bandwidths as high as the 622.08M bit/sec required by OC-12, according to the company.
Series 5000 includes CacheOS Version 2, an operating system designed solely for caching, a Java-based management console and a new command-line interface. The device also adds extensive environmental monitoring designed to work with CacheOS alert system, according to the company.
"This is a beefed-up caching device to meet expansion requirements from our existing carrier customers" so they can meet the growth in Web traffic, said Kelly Herrell, vice president of marketing for CacheFlow.
The announcement was praised by analysts, although several questioned the long-term viability of a market for companies offering solely caching, particularly given the relatively slow uptake of caching in enterprise operations.
"I like CacheFlow's approach to doing it in an appliance; having this be purpose-built from the ground up," said Ted Julian of Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. "The challenges for them aren't technical. It's more a matter of market dynamics. There's no question that it [Series 5000] puts them at the high end."
Julian predicted that as the big players in the network equipment market, such as Cisco, Nortel Networks and Lucent, either improve their caching technology or begin to offer it, they will end up acquiring the smaller caching firms or running them out of the market.
However, offering a carrier-class product will help caching vendors gain market share until the broader enterprise market catches on, he said.
The enterprise market has a long adoption cycle for caching primarily because network response time is not as critical to corporations as it is to ISPs, analysts said. Also, corporate network managers have other IT issues to handle.
"In the enterprise market caching is still in the uptake, mainly because enterprises are trying to get a grasp of their infrastructures and they're just now thinking what to do with their Internet site," said Stephen Elliot of Dataquest in Lowell, Mass.
In the future, the big companies will pose a threat to smaller caching vendors, Elliot said, adding, "it remains to be seen whether having caching plus other options will win the market," given the trend toward convergence.
"It is necessary for any of these caching companies to strike strategic partnerships," he said. It is possible that companies such as Cisco and the others could seek to partner with caching vendors or compete with them by adding caching to their other bandwidth management and traffic monitoring offerings, Elliot added.
CacheFlow needs to improve its marketing and brand recognition because despite the superiority of any product; the company with the "right" connections, sales team and channel is likely to win the most business initially, Elliot said.
David Strom of David Strom Inc. consultancy in Port Washington, N.Y., disagreed: "Enterprise customers are smart enough to look for the best possible solution and not just always buy the brand."
CacheFlow "developed its operating system and everything around squeezing the best performance around caching, not anything else," Strom said. "They're doing well in the enterprise market" despite the challenges that market provides.
CacheFlow's Herrell said 30% of the company's revenue comes from enterprise customers and the remainder from ISPs and backbone providers. Enterprises are beginning to see how caching can benefit their businesses. Therefore, the enterprises are following close behind the access providers in using caching, he said.
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