Foundry turns up heat on high-end security range
Firm hopes to crack high-performance security and load-balancing market
Foundry hopes to crack the market for high-performance security and load balancing with a range of new OSI Layer 4-7 hardware and software.
The firm has enjoyed some success selling its switches as server load balancers.
Andy Palmer, managing director of Foundry in northern Europe, described the launch of the ServerIron GT, 450 and 850 systems as "the most significant thing Foundry has done in Layer 4-7".
He added: "The GT is a cross between an appliance and a standard networking switch. Technologies, such as Secure Socket Layer, are becoming more peer-to-peer, and we're also providing defences against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
"The new kit represents Foundry getting bigger in the security space."
The ServerIron 450 and 850 both offer four-fold increases in connection performance and DoS protection at up to four million SYN packets per second.
They are the first modular, purpose-built Layer 4-7 switches with 10Gb Ethernet support.
Manny Pinon, sales and marketing manager at Foundry partner Norwood Adam, said: "F5 Networks also is seeing demand for load balancing. Foundry is pushing hard in the load-balancing area and is moving out of the LAN into wireless.
"There's usually a good battle going on between Cisco, F5 and Foundry in the Layer 4-7 space."
Foundry will back its push with seminars across Europe this summer. Palmer said: "Layer 4-7 networking is a huge opportunity for partners but is also hugely complex."