Check Point at the RSA Conference this week plans to release a line of enterprise appliances that match the prowess of its firewall software. The Check Point UTM-1 series impressed us in our exclusive Clear Choice Test with its integrated manageability and showed its performance chops with basic firewall and intrusion-prevention-system rules in place.

This combination gives security managers the long-overdue opportunity to buy Check Point’s tried and trusted software on an integrated, Check Point-supported hardware base.

The UTM-1 450 we tested, which was designed to support 250 simultaneous users, carries the same $7,500 price tag as Check Point’s software-only 250-user-license offering. Therefore, buying the former is like getting the hardware for free. The new appliances, unlike Check Point’s software-only package, do not limit the number of users that can access it. So, going from 250 users to the occasional 251 users incurs no additional cost.

This market move catapults Check Point out of the now-nonexistent “software firewall” category and puts it against chief hardware-only competitors — Cisco and Juniper — port for port, feature for feature.

Click to see: Check Point UTM-1

The many value-added resellers integrating Check Point software into their own hardware will find it difficult to compete with this new combination. Even Check Point’s high-end partners Nokia and Crossbeam should find these appliances significant competition. Nokia, for example, has a broader line of products, better management and significant expandability, but those advantages may be important to only a small fraction of its users.