Phobos cuts appliance prices for resellers
Internet infrastructure builder Phobos has entered the UK marketplace with two products that offer streamlined web appliances at a fraction of the going rate.
Internet infrastructure builder Phobos has entered the UK marketplace with two products that offer streamlined web appliances at a fraction of the going rate.
James Hildred, product manager at Computers Unlimited, said: "What Phobos does is vital for resellers and their customers. It is offering the web server technology at a price designed for small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs)."
David Pascoe, vice president of marketing at Phobos, openly admitted that Cisco and Intel resellers are his prime targets.
"We are opening a market to resellers who have been selling Cisco's and Intel's rack mounted technology. Intel's Netstructure 71-10 sells for $13,000 (£9274) retail; our SSL off-loader sells for $5000," he said.
"Intel has priced itself out of the SME market," he added. "Any enterprise can buy this box and get the benefit of off-loading, not just SMEs."
Phobos is promoting SslXpress as an ecommerce accelerator. Rather than use valuable server time to process secure socket layers (SSL), keys and certificates integral to website security and online transactions, Phobos hopes companies will connect the SslXpress to their servers and offload the maths to its dedicated processor.
The company is marketing its IpXpress web traffic load balancer as an intelligent regulator for web traffic, moving data around a network of clustered servers and monitoring the availability of each server for peak performance.
The US-based company recently appointed Ron Heinz as its new chief executive. Heinz had been running worldwide sales at Novell for 12 years. Phobos has also just hired James Pattinson, formerly Novell's director of channel sales in Europe, as its vice president of Europe, Middle East & Africa.
The acquiring of Novell staff is becoming a trend. "Novell people have flocked to Ron Heinz," said Pascoe. "He came in as president in June, and Novell people who knew him were calling him up to find out what he knew. Now we're hiring them."