Alteon launches new product family

Web switch maker Alteon Websystems next week launches its new iSD product family with two offerings that will feature encryption processing and automated content delivery to speed up site response.

This new family marks a departure for Alteon into the ecommerce services market. The iSD Accelerator and iSD Akamaizer are the first to be launched with other services to be released before the year's end, said marketing manager, Rob Mustarde.

"We are finding that more and more we are being asked to supply or be involved in some of the new and emerging peripheral technologies. These areas are key to what we already are involved in, so why don't we offer it ourselves?" he said.

Other vendors currently supply similar offerings, but as stand-alone devices that need to be managed and configured independently. Both Alteon's new products connect to its web switch which operates from Layer 4 up to Layer 7 of the protocol stack and performs functions such as URL-based switching. The iSD products can also be managed using the same tools as the company's web switch. Mustarde described the iSD as a new platform onto which a wide range of different applications can be put which are connected to the switch.

The iSD Accelerator's main job is to offload Secure Sockets Layer security processing functions from a web server in order to speed up this process. The switch identifies whether traffic coming into a website is or is not encrypted. Unencrypted, http, traffic is load balanced and posted on across the network while encrypted traffic will be redirected to the Accelerator which will convert it back to http traffic and then load balanced across various servers.

A secondary benefit is that it will prevent the frustrating problem of lost shopping carts which tend to happen when a customer making an online purchase moves into secure mode. Often their order is sent to an unrelated server and their order is lost.

The iSD Akamaizer is designed for users of Akamai's content distribution network. It automates the process of redirecting traffic to the Akamai network without the need for a company's website code to be rewritten, a prospect that many people balk at, said Mustarde.

The Accelerator will be available at the end of July, but the Akamaizer will not appear until September.

Alteon has also just released its Q4 financial results which shows the company has for the first time hit profitability with revenues of $51m, 80 per cent growth on the previous quarter, which prompted its stock value to jump by 30 per cent.