Expand delivers data center accelerator

Expand Networks last week announced an acceleration system for data centers that handles speeds of up to 200M bit/sec and supports up to 1,500 remote sites.

Expand says its Accelerator System 9000 would provide large enterprise networks adopting bandwidth optimization and compression technologies as an alternative to network build-outs. The Accelerator System 9000 is a modular bandwidth optimization device that allows organizations to add acceleration modules when the need arises.

The appliance comes pre-configured, to reduce the complexity and time associated with large-scale deployments. The company says its new box provides an immediate increase in network performance, measured in network capacity and speed increases across all applications and users.

The System 9000 comes loaded with ExpandView, which is Expand’s management software that keeps track of its acceleration gear and produces reports about overall WAN performance. ExpandView automatically discovers and classifies more than 100 enterprise applications while detecting performance problems relating to degraded WAN conditions and proactively fixes them for optimal application delivery across the network.

The platform monitors performance of point-to-point links and of applications running over those links, giving network administrators a tool for determining whether the performance of any particular connection is out of sync with other similar connections.

Expand’s Accelerator gear is sold in pairs that sit at either end of a point-to-point WAN link and compress the data, thereby increasing the amount of data per second that can travel across the wire. It also can impose quality-of-service policies on applications so those deemed most important get top priority and less important ones are blocked from hogging bandwidth.

“Data center consolidation, real-time business needs and fatter Web applications are congesting WAN networks,” Peter Firstbrook, senior research analyst with META Group, said in a statement. “As a result, organizations are looking for alternatives to recurring bandwidth charges to increase network and application performance. We are seeing bandwidth compression and optimization devices becoming the solution of choice in many large organizations.”

Accelerator System 9000 pricing begins at about $65,000 and will be generally available this month.