Crossbeam Systems announced Monday that French ISP Ecritel will be using its X-Series security platform to provide virtualized firewall services to its enterprise clients.

Crossbeam, a security platform vendor based in Boxborough, Mass., says that Ecritel has been using its X-Series platform for more than a year, and that it has previously relied upon a standard Check Point firewall to deliver security services to its enterprise customers. By switching to the virtualized firewall, Ecritel operations manager Jean Marie Lemoine says his company is now able to reduce its costs while providing the same carrier-grade security for its customers that the previous firewall had delivered. (Compare firewall products)

Jim Freeze, Crossbeam’s vice president of marketing, says that the X-Series platform provides carrier-grade reliability, with an annual uptime basis of 99.999%, and that its network capacity scales up to 40Gbps of IP forwarding capability.

Crossbeam’s X-Series security platform is a fully virtualized security gateway to allows companies to create up to 250 virtual security systems, including virtual firewall, VPN, intrusion prevention and content filtering. Crossbeam’s security platform is deployed in more than 80% of service provider networks, including three of the top four mobile operators and all of the regional Bell operating companies, according to the company.