More branch office bundling

Network Optimization This newsletter is sponsored by Arsenal Digital Solutions Automated Off-Site Data Protection for SMBs Would you bet your company on the data saved during your last backup? Statistics show that only 6% of companies suffering a catastrophic data loss will survive beyond two years. And yet many organizations struggle to maintain a regular backup schedule, especially as more and more employees work from remote locations: branch offices, home offices, and while traveling. Join us for a timely, interactive presentation to find out how automated, off-site data protection can help SMBs to meet and overcome their backup, recovery and business continuity challenges. Click here to register today and learn how to protect your mission-critical data! Network World's Network Optimization Newsletter, 05/17/07 More branch office bundling By Ann Bednarz Earlier this week I wrote about Converged Access, which unveiled its version of an all-in-one branch office device. Another vendor shooting for unified branch office gear is Packeteer, which just unveiled its new iShaper appliance. The iShaper bundles application acceleration and QoS capabilities with network performance troubleshooting tools, security services and native Microsoft application services. By combining multiple functions on a single device, Packeteer is reducing the number of appliances companies have to purchase, deploy and manage, says Mark Urban, director of product marketing at the company. The iShaper is designed to optimize data, voice and video traffic while helping customers’ in their efforts to centralize data and storage and consolidate branch office server infrastructure, he says. Manage Insider Security Threats Experts say 75% of security threats come from inside your organization. Watch the latest Network World Editorial Perspectives Webcast today, "Security From the Inside," and learn which technologies and processes best protect your intellectual property and assets inside the perimeter. Click Here to View “It unifies all the capabilities that we see to deliver the full spectrum of applications to the branch office in a single package -- monitoring, shaping and acceleration as well as a full set of Microsoft services,” Urban says. “Our goal and focus here was to bring the next level of infrastructure consolidation to the branch office.” The iShaper can discover more than 600 applications and protocols as well as keep tabs on their performance and apply optimization techniques for specific applications. Acceleration features let companies prioritize and accelerate Common Internet File System (CIFS), FTP, TCP and HTTP-based applications. In addition, the iShaper can apply compression for transactional traffic and disk-based byte caching for data intensive bulk applications to reduce network traffic. On the voice front, iShaper can monitor the quality of voice calls and make use of traffic reduction techniques to increase network capacity. For video traffic, iShaper can monitor the quality of video conferencing applications as well as identify and separate recreational video from business conferencing so key business-related applications don’t suffer. Bundled Microsoft services include Windows Server, Internet Security and Acceleration Server and System Management Server. “We saw customers wanted us to not only consolidate our own technologies, but also find a new way to deliver things like the services provided by all those Microsoft servers at the branch office,” Urban says. “That’s really what the iShaper is about: the best of WAN optimization, WAN visibility, as well as that rich set of Microsoft services all on one platform.” Available by midyear, iShaper starts at $11,000 for an appliance that can provide up to 45Mbps throughput with 10Mbps of accelerated traffic. “Server consolidation has achieved remarkable improvements in distributed IT cost-effectiveness and data security but at the cost of branch office application and data access performance,” said Peter Christy, principal analyst at Internet Research Group. “Packeteer's iShaper appliance is the first to integrate application visibility and QoS with wide-area acceleration functionality, including important Microsoft technical initiatives, into one manageable system, raising the bar in branch office application and server consolidation.”   What do you think? Post a comment on this newsletter

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Contact the author: Ann Bednarz is an associate news editor at Network World responsible for editing daily news content. She previously covered enterprise applications, e-commerce and telework trends for Network World. E-mail Ann. This newsletter is sponsored by Arsenal Digital Solutions Automated Off-Site Data Protection for SMBs Would you bet your company on the data saved during your last backup? Statistics show that only 6% of companies suffering a catastrophic data loss will survive beyond two years. And yet many organizations struggle to maintain a regular backup schedule, especially as more and more employees work from remote locations: branch offices, home offices, and while traveling. Join us for a timely, interactive presentation to find out how automated, off-site data protection can help SMBs to meet and overcome their backup, recovery and business continuity challenges. Click here to register today and learn how to protect your mission-critical data! ARCHIVE Archive of the Network Optimization Newsletter. BONUS FEATURE IT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details. PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today. International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: networking.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007