Packeteer this week is introducing branch office hardware that supports faster WAN response times and cuts the number of devices needed in branch offices.

Called iShaper, the device includes intelligent acceleration of applications, compression, performance monitoring, caching and a range of Microsoft services.

The device can enable businesses to eliminate separate servers that otherwise would be needed to supplement caching and acceleration gear with Microsoft services.

For instance, Erickson Retirement Communities, which invests $1 billion per year in building new sites, installed an iShaper at a site under construction in Ashburn, Va., where engineers need to tap into CAD files from central databases at the company's Catonsville, Md., headquarters.

The company was already a Packeteer customer using its iShared device to cache data locally and sync files with centrally stored databases.

“I was going to put in an iShared and a server for file, print and domain services,” says Scott Erickson, CTO of the firm, but iShaper combined the functions on a single device.

He installed an iShaper at the Ashburn office and created a 100GB subfolder of the data needed at that site. It was downloaded to the iShaper, and it greatly improves response times compared with trying to tap data directly over the 1.5Mbps link between Ashburn and Catonsville, he says.

Whenever a file is altered, iShaper coordinates sending only the changes over the WAN to update the centrally stored files, Erickson says. “It takes a long time to get the subfolder there but after that it does bit-level updates.”

He adds that his administrators manage the Windows services on iShaper as if they were on a Windows host, “just as if it’s on a Dell server.” And these services are running on a server blade within the iShaper box, says Peter Christy, a principal analyst with Internet Research Group.

He says over time such devices can save money. “You don’t have to put the pieces together and get them to interoperate,” he says. “You get all the functionality without doing the engineering and maintenance of multiple devices.”

The Microsoft services include Windows Server, Internet Security and Acceleration Server and System Management Server. Later this year, it also will include advanced Windows ISA security, Packeteer says.