Microsoft deal produces branch-office appliance

Packeteer has revealed what it claims is the industry's first "comprehensive, Microsoft Windows-based branch office IT solution", called iShaper.

The network optimisation firm and Microsoft have an established partnership targeting companies with large numbers of branch offices, and iShaper — due to be released later this quarter — is the result. Packeteer is supplying WAN optimisation, application visibility and prioritisation technologies, while Microsoft is offering its Windows Server, Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server and System Management Server (SMS).

Packeteer says the iShaper appliance "intelligently accelerates high-priority data traffic without imposing performance penalties on other applications, and optimises the quality of converging voice and video traffic".

Its chief executive officer, Dave Cote, told ZDNet UK on Tuesday that the partnership made sense because "Microsoft represents 90-plus percent of the application infrastructure for most companies".

"A number of players have acceleration-only products. While those tools are useful, we don't think it is sufficient, because it doesn't do anything to help voice and video, or transaction-based applications," said Cote. "No-one offers the comprehensive platform that we do, that starts with what we call 'application intelligence' — our product will automatically discover more than 600 applications or tools."

Rakesh Narasimhan, general manager of Microsoft's enterprise access and security products, said: "In addition to its leadership in WAFS [wide area file services] and WAN optimisation solutions, Packeteer gives customers unique insights into the state of applications and their performance while running in the branch. Customers benefit from having the best application visibility and monitoring tools to manage their widely-adopted Windows infrastructure in branch locations."