* Converged Access looks to help enterprises replace stand-alone network appliances with a multipurpose device
A couple of weeks ago I raised the issue of branch office clutter and appliance overload. One vendor with a plan to clean up the clutter is Converged Access, which last week unveiled a network device that combines traffic management and WAN optimization features with firewall, VPN and routing capabilities.
The Branch Services Gateway (BSG) is designed to help enterprises speed the performance of voice, video and data applications delivered over the WAN to branch offices with up to 50 people. At the same time, BSG alleviates the need to deploy multiple standalone devices in remote office environments — which reduces an enterprise’s upfront IT investment costs as well as ongoing operational expenses, says Manickam Sridhar, CTO at Converged Access.
BSG bundles WAN optimization technologies including traffic management, compression and caching; integrated switching and routing; and built-in firewall, VPN, and intrusion detection and prevention features. It supports VoIP and provides telephony features such as caller ID, call transfer and three-way calling. In addition, the device has analog phone ports that can be used to make calls if the IP network or the central soft-switch fails.
To complement the devices, Converged Access also unveiled its new Converged Provisioning System (CPS) software that lets enterprises manage multiple BSG devices from a central console.
If a company makes a policy change, CPS propagates the change throughout the system rather than requiring administrators to individually reconfigure each BSG device. CPS also provides ongoing application monitoring and reporting.
“Fundamentally you take five or six devices — the firewall, VPN, traffic manager and so on — and you collapse them into one. More importantly, you also take the four or five management systems that are required and collapse that into one provisioning and management system,” Sridhar says.
A key feature of the converged device is ease of install, he says. Once a BSG is powered up, it will automatically detect the CPS software, download a configuration file appropriate for its specific location, and configure itself “without any IT attention at all.”
The BSG device and CPS management software are available today. Pricing starts at $2,400 for the BSG 5004T, which provides maximum throughput of 10 Mbps, can support 47 concurrent voice calls on a T-1 link, has 8 10/100 Ethernet switch ports and 4 FSX analog voice ports, and can support 25 concurrent VPN tunnels.
