IBM’s Internet Security Systems division is making its security-management console software available in an appliance form for the first time.

The SiteProtector box is a dual-processor server with mirrored SCSI hard drives preconfigured with licensed software, including SQL Server 2005.

Expected to be available by the end of the month, the appliance will cost $23,500, roughly twice as much as SiteProtector in software-only form. But network managers say the cost differential is negligible compared with having to buy the hardware, load up software and configure it.

“It’s so much easier to set up and get it configured,” says Jim Burris, network manager at Kenco Group, a Chattanooga, Tenn., transportation logistics firm, which last week switched from the software-based SiteProtector to the hardware appliance. “It takes four to six hours to get the SiteProtector software up and going, but I had the appliance set up in thirty minutes.”

Kenco uses SiteProtector to manage a number of the ISS network and desktop intrusion-prevention and security products to protect its network.

Click to see: For the first time, ISS is making its SiteProtector manement console

IBM earlier this year announced it would buy ISS for $1.2 billion, an acquisition it formally completed last month.