Crosscheck Networks this week announced its acquisition of Forum Systems, an early player in the market for securing and accelerating Web services traffic.

Crosscheck provides Web services testing and simulation tools, while Forum Systems offers hardware and software for routing XML and Web services traffic across networks, in accordance with corporate security policies. Put together, their products can help customers build, test and secure Web services more efficiently, the two vendors say.

Crosscheck’s product suite now includes three key products from Forum Systems: SOAPSimulator, which developers and testers can use to simulate services so they can build client and service components of a SOAP- or XML-based Web service in parallel; SOAPSonar, which provides testing modes for functional, performance, compliance and security testing of SOAP-, XML- and REST-based services; and Forum Sentry, an XML gateway that secures SOAP- and XML-based Web services.

Mamoon Yunus will lead Crosscheck as president and CEO. Yonus founded Forum Systems in 2001 and most recently served as its president and CTO. He also served as an advisor to Crosscheck. Forum Systems will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary and will be led by Rizwan Mallal, vice president of operations.

By optimizing how Web services are delivered, companies can reduce service development, testing and integration costs, while also sharing policies more efficiently, the vendors say.

"This acquisition is the natural progression of the relationship between our companies and addresses the changing requirements of customers," Mallal said in a statement. "Now, more than ever in these difficult economic times, organizations are seeking competitive advantage. By facilitating more collaborative, interoperable and automated processes, we are helping enterprises compress project timelines, reduce time-to-market and ultimately publish their services more quickly than ever before."

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.