9/26/2006 -- Look out, Cisco Systems Inc. -- Foundry Networks has its eyes on the SMB content management space. Foundry last week announced a new family of entry-level ServerIron application and content management switches, complete with an integrated Web firewall security suite.

Foundry's new ServerIron 4G, slated to debut next month, bundles application switching, content management and security capabilities.

It's a smart move by a scrappy competitor, said Steven Schuchart, a senior analyst for enterprise infrastructure with consultancy Current Analysis. "These products are designed for a market segment that is not very well-served by existing products from any competitor. The small to medium-sized business market has largely been left out of application switching due to high cost of entry. These products are also appropriate for point solutions within large enterprises where acceleration would not normally be considered due to cost restrictions," he writes. "The ServerIron 4G application switches allow these customers to take advantage of application acceleration and traffic management, and one model, the ServerIron 4G-SSL, allows for SSL acceleration. Both models support hitless failover for high availability and have a maximum application rate of 2 GBPS."

Elsewhere on the performance front, Foundry's new ServerIron devices offer 1.2 million SYN/sec of DDoS protection, in addition to their obligatory Web firewall capabilities. According to Schuchart, "most competing products on the marketplace have significantly higher price points, making the ServerIron 4G attractive. Customers that purchase the ServerIron 4G can also step up to Foundry's other application and traffic management products if they outgrow the 4G series." -Stephen Swoyer