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A flurry of innovation is coming to the enterprise that should make emerging Web and wireless technologies ready for business prime time and help network infrastructures keep up with the changes.
Companies such as Packeteer Inc., Allot Communications Ltd. and Radware Ltd. are among a host of companies rolling out wares this week at NetWorld+Interop in Las Vegas that reduce IP performance problems associated with massive enterprise application deployments.
Application traffic management pioneer Packeteer, for example, will announce this week that it is adding new compression technology to its latest PacketShaper 1550 and PacketShaper 2550 appliances, as well as to its PacketShaper 8500- and 9500-series units.
The PacketShaper Xpress software module uses a new compression algorithm, dubbed Computational Numeric Analysis, that, depending on the type of application, boosts throughput by as much as 1,000 percent, said officials in Cupertino, Calif.
The addition of compression enabled one early user to avoid having to move from a T-1 line to a more costly fractional T-3 line. It also allowed for the reduction of network overhead by 30 percent, according to Joe Ortiz, director of IT at Hall & Foreman Inc., a civil engineering company in Irvine, Calif. Ortiz said he also looked at Allot Communications NetReality traffic management device before choosing Packeteer.
Allot, also at N+I, will announce greater horsepower for NetReality, as well as the added ability to detect peer-to-peer applications traffic on the network. The Eden Prairie, Minn., company also enhanced its NetEnforcer traffic management software to support more monitoring views, along with 100 new charts and graphs.
Meanwhile, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) acceleration provider Radware will jump into the compression fray at the applications layer with new Web compression for HTTP applications. The Radware CertainT 100 device, which consolidates SSL offloading and acceleration, will now support the Gzip compression algorithm built into Microsoft Corp.s Internet Explorer browser to boost performance for Web applications up to 40 percent, said officials in Mahwah, N.J. It also has been upgraded with the ability to multiplex multiple HTTP requests into a single request to speed transfers.
For administrators trying to understand the impact of such performance issues on business services, System Management Arts Inc. this week will launch a new Smarts Business Intelligence initiative aimed at providing greater automation and analysis to resolve the most important problems quickly.
As part of that initiative, Smarts, of White Plains, N.Y., this week will launch InCharge 6.2, an update of its root- cause analysis suite, which adds the new InCharge Business Dashboard and InCharge Server Performance Manager, as well as upgraded versions of the suites Business Impact Manager, Service Assurance Manager and Availability Manager. The new dashboard provides a Web-based view that can be customized to show the status of IT resources and how their health affects the business.
To address the growing need for management of wireless networks, Symbol Technologies Inc. will introduce at the show Mobility Services Suite, a platform designed to manage networks, devices and applications. The suite includes Mobility Services Platform—a rack-mountable appliance that communicates with Mobility Service Agents, which reside on the mobile devices in the network, giving the administrator a centralized view of all devices. The appliance allows for automatic provisioning of applications and expedites diagnostics and repair times, said company officials in Holtsville, N.Y.
Airespace Inc., which entered the WLAN (wireless LAN) switching market a year ago, will launch products at N+I that focus on location-based services and RF (radio-frequency) management.
Airespaces IRAP (Intelligent RF Access Point) uses so-called smart antenna technology to sample RF paths to pick the best one. The company is also adding enhancements to its AireWave Director management software that complement RF switching by making sure the IRAP adheres to security and capacity management policies, said officials in San Jose, Calif.
Airespace is also introducing its AWLS (Airespace Wireless Location Services) suite, which combines location management services with active 802.11 (or Wi-Fi) RFID (RF identification) tagging. The suite allows IT managers to track mobile devices and includes location software that fits into the Airespace Director, a location appliance, new APIs that tie location services into external applications and an 802.11-based RFID transceiver tag from Bluesoft Inc.