"You've got to show a path that over time, [your equipment] helps get rid of other boxes," Johnson said, during a panel discussion at the Network Outlook conference this past week. Even as IT budgets increase, he said, most enterprises are still looking mainly for equipment that can produce "immediate ROI." Redline's accelerators, Johnson said, can also let enterprises get more performance out of the servers they do have, negating the need for additional server purchases.
Lori MacVittie, Senior Technology Editor for Network Computing, said the new features were a good addition to the Redline offerings (which she initially reviewed last year). However, MacVittie noted that Layer 7 routing is now a commodity, with wares offered from a long list of vendors, including F5, Foundry, Nortel, Extreme, Cisco, Radware, CoyotePoint, Netscaler and ArrayNetworks. And Redline's pricing (between $30,000 and $50,000 per box, depending on configuration) can be a bit steep for some mid-market customers, she said.
"It's going to be hard to compete in this space with established vendors like F5, Radware and Cisco," MacVittie said. "It's the value adds and the depth of switching based on payload that's going to be important in the next year as more and more content is exchanged via XML and the demand for more intelligent switches continues to grow."
The new software version is scheduled to be available immediately, according to Redline. Existing Redline customers, the company said, can contact their local sales office for a free upgrade to the new software version.
