* Kemp Technologies ups the performance of its affordable load balancing gear
A vendor with traffic management gear designed for cost-conscious businesses is setting its sights a bit higher upstream with its latest release.
Kemp Technologies has traditionally targeted small enterprises with its server load balancing and SSL acceleration products, which start at $2,490. The latest addition to the Kemp lineup is the LoadMaster 3500, which doubles the performance of its predecessor.
The LoadMaster 3500 is a 1U rack mountable appliance with 8 Gigabit Ethernet ports, up to 2Gbps combined throughput, and Layer 7 content switching with integrated ASIC-based SSL acceleration. It can support up to 100,000 concurrent Layer 7 sessions and 2 million concurrent Layer 4 sessions, according to the vendor. It lists for $8,990.
The LoadMaster 3500 will extend Kemp’s reach into midsize enterprises, according to Michael Brandenburg, an analyst for the enterprise network systems group at research firm Current Analysis.
“By raising the bar on the number of transactions and overall throughput its products can process, Kemp can now compete in deployments previously beyond its reach, as well as hold on to existing customer installations that might have outgrown its smaller products,” Brandenburg wrote in a research brief.
However the improved capabilities and performance won’t guarantee Kemp easy inroads into the midsize enterprise market, where it will face fierce competition from established vendors, Brandenburg cautions.
“Moving beyond the traditional small business market where Kemp has enjoyed past success, the 3500 will face the daunting task of going up against competing products with a wider range of functionality, such as those from F5 and Juniper,” Brandenburg wrote. “While being able to rely solely on its pricing to garner wins in the small business segment, purchasing decisions in the medium sized enterprise are based on feature sets as well as price, with the 3500 falling short on function.”
Still, while Kemp’s LoadMaster 3500 may not match the functionality of more advanced application delivery products, it could be just what is needed by businesses with straightforward Web server load balancing needs and a tight budget.
One last thing… this week I returned to work full time after spending the last three months on maternity leave. Now that I’m back to regular working hours — and regular sleeping hours! — I’ll be able to re-sharpen my focus on the WAN optimization market. So please don’t hesitate to get in touch and let me know what you’d like to see covered in the newsletter.
