Web devices ease admin worries

The firm is shipping its Array 1000 and 500, both designed to centralize the management of corporate Internet infrastructure into a single box. They cost £30,000 and £5,900 respectively.

The 5.25-inch Array 1000 comes as a single rack unit that incorporates 1GB RAM, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, a Web firewall, reverse proxy cacheing, secure sockets layer (SSL) acceleration, clustering and content rewrite. It also offers local and global load-balancing capabilities, and can be paired with another device to improve redundancy in a Web server environment. The appliance has an interface similar to Cisco's Command Line Interface (CLI), and can be implemented in just a couple of hours with minimal downtime, according to ClickArray.

"The IT department doesn't want to have to train different people to run different parts of the Internet environment," said Robert Mustarde, regional vice president at ClickArray. "This one tool will allow IT departments to manage it centrally and will save the cost of buying appliances and spare boxes individually."

Analysts said they expect more vendors to develop similar products, but added that network managers should benchmark products before they buy. Antefacto's Sentinel 1 is a low-end device in the same vein. "Conceptually, this is a sound model. It's a very fragmented market and users aren't ecstatic about having to buy and manage numerous boxes," said Iain Stevenson, research director for next generation networks at analyst group Ovum.

Stevenson added that vendors could simply put a clever graphical front on a weak product, however, and warned networks managers to check that such devices could meet their needs, before they buy.

The Array 500 comes in a 1.75in unit that offers the same integrated Web features as the 1000, but without support for clustering, alongside dual 10/100Mbit/s interfaces.