Cisco gears up to accelerate applications

Two families of network appliances announced last week from Cisco may help companies more easily and efficiently link to remote customers and branch-office workers.

The appliances, based on technology Cisco got through its acquisitions of Actona and FineGround, are designed to accelerate applications over WANs and make it easier to consolidate IT infrastructure, according to Cisco. They come from Cisco's Application Delivery Business Unit, a new division formed this week, says 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 Cisco. In addition to reducing response times for end users, it can cut the bandwidth required to deliver an application and reduce server-processing cycles by as much as 8%, the company says. The AVS technology came from FineGround, which Cisco acquired earlier this year.

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Two families of network appliances announced last week from Cisco may help companies more easily and efficiently link to remote customers and branch-office workers.

The appliances, based on technology Cisco got through its acquisitions of Actona and FineGround, are designed to accelerate applications over WANs and make it easier to consolidate IT infrastructure, according to Cisco. They come from Cisco's Application Delivery Business Unit, a new division formed this week, says 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 Cisco. In addition to reducing response times for end users, it can cut the bandwidth required to deliver an application and reduce server-processing cycles by as much as 8%, the company says. The AVS technology came from FineGround, which Cisco acquired earlier this year.

Within the AVS family, the 3120 model handles performance improvements by offloading server processes and minimizing communication overhead - the "chattiness" that comes from managing data exchanges. It also can 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 a network, Cisco says. The AVS 3120 is priced at $36,000, and the AVS 3180 costs $15,000.

Also last week, 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 accelerates Internet protocols such as HTTP and FTP, as well as video protocols, Henze says. For example, it can speed up access to ERP or CRM through Web portals, he says.

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

Both technologies are integrated as software in WAE. The system lets companies eliminate servers from their branch offices, instead running applications and storing information in a central data center. It works by storing a cached copy of the latest data used, as well as minimizing overhead chatter on the WAN connection and reducing bandwidth demands through techniques such as compression, Henze says.

Experts say Cisco's enhancements will help the company compete in the WAN and applications-acceleration arenas with Array Networks, Converged Access, Expand, Juniper, Orbital Data, Packeteer, Riverbed Technology, Silver Peak Systems, Swan Labs and others.

According to Gartner, the market for acceleration products came into its own last year, when it reached $967 million worldwide.