The number of branch offices keeps climbing - and with it the need to address WAN optimization and application acceleration options for distributed office sites. (Compare Application Acceleration and WAN Traffic Optimization products)

With an eye on that market, Expand Networks last week unveiled its retooled branch office appliances, which are designed to provide enterprises with greater scalability options. Expand nixed its prior low-end device (its 1800 series) and released new pricing and features for its two remaining low-end options, the Expand Accelerator 4830 and 4930.

Both can scale from 128K up to 6Mbps. If an enterprise wants to increase capacity, all that’s required is a licensing upgrade, not a hardware swap. Through Expand’s centralized management platform, customers simply input the new licensing information and it gets pushed out to relevant devices at the edge, says Adam Davidson, Expand’s corporate vice president of sales and marketing. No physical changes are required at the box, which is important for companies that don’t have IT staff at every remote office, he says.

“Customers don’t want to forklift their products out. They want to pay for the low-level product that they’re going to use today, and they want the ability to upgrade later without doing a hardware swap,” Davidson says.

The Accelerator 4830 tops out at 6Mbps of compression throughput; 45Mbps of TCP acceleration and Layer 7 QoS throughput; 64,000 concurrent TCP sessions; and 100 connected Accelerators. The Accelerator 4930 offers the same capabilities, plus support for up to 200 users of wide-area file services (WAFS). 

The retooled models let enterprises invest in gear that has long-term potential and can adapt as business requirements change and user demand grows, Davidson says. At the same time, the entry-level pricing is affordable: The Accelerator 4830 is priced starting at $2,395, and the Accelerator 4930 starts at $2,495.

“It’s about pricing as well as scaling. One doesn’t go without the other, which is important,” Davidson says.

For Expand, the new lineup means it has fewer types of devices to manufacture, since the 1800 series is being discontinued and the 4830 and 4930 models are filling the gap. That translates into cost savings for the vendor -- and customers. “We’re in a position where we can take those economies of scale and pass those benefits on to the customers,” Davidson says.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.