Cisco last week introduced application acceleration and branch office products that the network giant says will help bring faster application response times to remote users. The new wares are the result of Cisco's acquisition of FineGround this past summer.

Among the releases are the Cisco Application Velocity System (AVS), which the vendor describes as a family of application acceleration, security and monitoring appliances for the data center. Also new is the Cisco Wide-area Application Engine (WAE), another family of appliances that Cisco says are designed to accelerate application delivery. The WAE could provide file and rich media access to branch offices, Cisco says.

Cisco AVS and Cisco WAE are available immediately. Cisco AVS 3120 is priced at $34,995, while Cisco AVS 3180 management station is priced at $14,995. Pricing for Cisco WAE begins at $5,500.

The product news marks Cisco's pursuit of some application acceleration dollars in this fast-growing market, which Forrester Research estimates will reach $2 billion this year. Cisco's entry into the market both validates it and causes much speculation across the industry. Does it make sense for Cisco to provide these technologies in addition to its traditional wares? And can niche players - now fewer than ever considering the multiple acquisitions - compete with a networking heavyweight and industry veteran like Cisco?

And acceleration isn't the only area Cisco is attempting to broaden itself beyond being an equipment provider. Cisco's application-oriented networking (AON) initiative is a move to position itself higher up in the IT stack. And acquisitions like that of Sheer Networks announced in August, will equip the vendor with more management capabilities that could be put to use to enable further data center automation, industry watchers say.

"Cisco will ultimately migrate FineGround's functionality into its Catalyst switches. This will give Cisco the ability to do Ethernet switching, server load balancing, firewalling, and application acceleration - all in one chassis," states a report by Forrester Research.

What are your thoughts? Should Cisco be advancing in the application acceleration and data center automation markets? Would you prefer to get these technologies from an established gear vendor or an innovative software player? Let me know your thoughts at mailto:ddubie@nww.com.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.