Coyote Point Releases App Acceleration/Load Balancing Appliances for SMBs

Coyote Point Systems announced the launch of three upgraded products as part of its Equalizer GX family of load balancing and application acceleration appliances. Built on new hardware and software architectures, the Equalizer GX family provides up to 400 percent performance gains compared to its predecessor.

Coyote Point's Equalizer GX family is comprised of three appliances, the Equalizer 350GX, 450GX and 650GX, each optimized for particular midmarket environments.

"We like to describe ourselves as enabling a faster, more balanced application experience," says Coyote Point's director of marketing, Jim Puchbauer. "We are trying to provide 100 percent of what 90 percent of the market needs. If it's not affordable, reliable and useable, you're really not in midmarket play."

Puchbauer says the spread of features from the lowest-cost appliance, the 350GX, to the 650GX, allows midmarket companies to purchase technology they need without breaking the budget or overwhelming IT staff. He attributes the second solution to the newly redesigned graphical user interface (GUI). "This is one of the reasons we've found success in the midmarket--we make it truly easy to use," he says. "You don't need a PhD in acceleration and load balancing to run this."

Political organization MoveOn.org was the first to deploy the Equalizer GX. The organization needed to upgrade its application acceleration and load balancing technology to support the amount of Web server traffic and turned to Coyote Point. A current customer, MoveOn.org returned to the company to support its community growth.

"We compared Coyote against other vendors, such as F5 and Foundry, and found that there was no contest from a cost and performance standpoint," said MoveOn.org system architect Patrick Kane. "We needed to insure that Moveon.org was 100 percent available and responsive during the critical period leading up to the election. We couldn't leave anything to chance when processing online donations; SSL performance was obviously a key requirement. The E450GX was an integral part of Moveon.org's success."

Puchbauer says even though midmarket companies don't have enterprise-level staff or budgets, that doesn't mean they're not looking for high-performance, reliable equipment. "SMB owners are not looking to install toys," he says. "The No. 1 thing that we provide to the customer is 100 percent up time. Our value proposition is very important to our customers in these times, if your needs are 100 percent availability."

Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president of enterprise research at consulting and research firm Yankee Group, says midmarket-targeted companies such as Coyote Point are an excellent driver for application acceleration/load balancing appliances. "The midmarket for networking technology is a hard nut to crack, as companies require a lot before they'll adopt a new solution," Kerravala says. "Hardware vendors offering products that are sensitive to the cost-consciousness in this market, while still offering enterprise-class performance, will certainly have a leg-up on their competitors. Companies such as Coyote Point Systems that also focus on reliability, ease-of-use and ease-of-deployment - without a steep learning curve - are in a good position to serve the sweet spot of the midmarket."

The product line is distributed through the channel, with price points starting at $6,495 for the E350GX, $10,195 for the E450GX and $14,395 for the E650GX.