* Expand Networks puts WAFS into appliances
As the application acceleration market continues to consolidate, companies such as Expand Networks are loading their boxes with more features to help customers consolidate their data centers.
Expand this week is expected to announce it will add wide area file services (WAFS) to its portfolio of application acceleration technologies. The company is also pumping up its Accelerator product suite with Common Internet File System (CIFS) and Citrix-based application acceleration. Expand representatives says the enhancements will help enterprise IT managers looking to deliver LAN-like application performance to remote and branch offices.
“Today 87% of the workforce is decentralized, and poor application performance is completely unacceptable,” says Ariel Shulman, vice president of marketing at Expand. “It’s critical companies be able to deliver optimal performance to distributed workers.”
The Accelerator appliances must be installed in both a data center and a remote site. The remote-site boxes contain both WAFS and application acceleration technologies such as caching and compression, while the data-center devices can be equipped to do both – or IT managers can choose to keep the two feature sets on separate appliances. For instance, a WAN optimization device would be installed next to routers while a WAFS box would be installed near a file server.
“Our customers have told us they want the flexibility to split the tasks in the data center and to reduce overhead in remote offices by replacing the branch file servers with an Accelerator appliance,” Shulman says.
The new boxes work with the company’s ExpandView management console software. The company says the software automatically discovers and classifies more than 100 enterprise applications while detecting performance problems relating to degraded WAN conditions. It also proactively fixes the problems for optimal application delivery across a network, Expand says.
The three new hardware platforms are:
Accelerator 4920 Series: A remote branch device supporting WAN speeds of up to 2M bit/sec and 10 remote sites. Has a 160G-byte hard drive. Pricing begins at $4,495.
Accelerator 6910 Series: A device geared for the smaller regional data center, supporting WAN speeds of up to 10M bit/sec and 50 remote sites. Has a 400G-byte hard drive. Pricing begins at $11,995.
Accelerator 6940 Series: Developed for large data centers, this device supports WAN speeds of up to 20M bit/sec and 200 remote sites. Has a 400G-byte hard drive. Pricing begins at $19,995.
All products are currently in beta.
