Two families of network appliances announced Thursday and now shipping from Cisco may help enterprises reach out to customers and branch workers more quickly and efficiently.

The appliances, based on technology Cisco got through its acquisitions of Actona Technologies and FineGround Networks , are designed to accelerate applications over WANs and make it easier to consolidate IT infrastructure, according to the San Jose company. They come from Cisco's Application Delivery Business Unit, a new division formed this week, said John Henze, director of marketing for the new group.

The Cisco Application Velocity System (AVS) is a pair of appliances for accelerating applications served from an enterprise data center and delivered via the Web. It can accelerate any application based on HTML or XML, providing a LAN-like experience over a WAN, according to a Cisco press release. In addition to reducing response times for end users, it can both cut the bandwidth required to deliver an application and reduce server processing cycles by as much as 80%, the company said. The AVS technology came from FineGround.

Within the AVS family, the AVS 3120 handles performance improvements by offloading server processes and minimizing communication overhead -- the "chattiness" that comes from managing data exchanges. It can also identify and prevent application-layer threats and data theft, according to Cisco. The AVS 3180 is a management station that monitors and reports on application response time throughout the network, Cisco said. The Cisco AVS 3120 is priced at $35,995 and the AVS 3180 costs $14,995.

Also Thursday, Cisco introduced the Wide-Area Application Engine (WAE), which combines two Cisco technologies for application acceleration at branch offices. Cisco Application and Content Networking System (ACNS) accelerates Internet protocols such as HTTP and FTP, as well as video protocols, Cisco's Henze said. For example, it can speed up access to ERP or CRM through Web portals, Henze said.

Wide Area File Services (WAFS), technology that Cisco acquired through its acquisition of Actona, works with file-based protocols such as Common Internet File System (CIFS) and Network File System (NFS), Henze said. It can accelerate Microsoft Office applications and databases, among other things, he said.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.