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Orbital Data on Monday became one of the first WAN optimization and application acceleration providers to extend the benefits of those functions to individual end users.
The San Mateo, Calif., company launched a new Windows-based client for its lineup of symmetric WAN offerings, providing a performance boost for mobile workers and SOHO (small office/home office) users accessing applications across a WAN.
The new OrbitalEdge offering also includes a new data center appliance, the Orbital 7300, along with a centralized Orbital Management System.
The combined offering exploits Orbital Datas Auto Optimizer Engine, which provides automated discovery, autoconfiguration and automated tuning of the system to employ the most appropriate optimization techniques for the type of traffic traversing a WAN link.
“Were extending the reach of symmetric WAN optimization to the rest of the enterprise—small branch offices, home offices and mobile users working from airport terminals and Starbucks. We think this redefines the reach of the industry,” said Gordon Smith, vice president of marketing.
To date, most application acceleration and WAN optimization technology has been deployed in either server-side or symmetric data center and large branch office appliances that are too costly to deploy for small branch or home offices.
For enterprises looking to support larger WAN optimization deployments as they continue to consolidate servers into a central data center, the new OrbitalEdge offering is intended to recapture lost productivity among road warriors and extranet users that the larger appliances dont reach, according to Dan Decasper, chief technology officer at Orbital Data.
A single Orbital 7300 appliance in the data center can support up to 500 remote users, and multiple appliances can be clustered to support more users. The Orbital Management System provides centralized configuration management for remote clients as well as log aggregation and software updates.
While Orbital will initially support only Windows clients when the product ships in the second quarter, the company intends to add support for Linux, Unix and Mac clients over the course of 2006, Decasper said.
“The software is transparent to the user. There is no user interface. It is installed through push [software distribution] using [Microsofts] SMS, or the user can click on a link on a Web page and it self-installs,” he said. Thus, he said, there is nothing to break in the process.
The system, which provides acceleration for HTTP, HTTPS, CIFS, FTP and other application protocols, is priced at $50,000 for 500 users.