Network giant Cisco has announced new appliances designed to extend its application network services (ANS) and to improve datacentre security.

Cisco security consultant Kevin Regan said that the new members of the firms' Adaptive Security Appliance family - the 5580-20 and 5580-40 models - are, “Cisco’s response to firms’ demands for better content inspection performance and for datacentre managers wanting to consolidate firewalls.”

Depending on the protocol mix Regan said that the 5580-20 model would give 5Gbit/s throughput performance, while the 5580-40 model would give twice the throughput at around 10Gbit/s. “We’re seeing people using a wider variety of access devices and there’s a real need for financial institutions to get really low latency for better performing real-time applications,” added Regan.

Cisco’s UK manager for datacentre technology Pete Nicholls said, “As part of the Cisco Datacentre Assurance Program (DCAP), we’ve announced a set of applications from BEA, IBM, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft that have been tested and certified for use on the ANS platform. Programs validated include: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft Enterprise, and Oracle Portal.

Nicholls added that Cisco had launched a standalone appliance version, the 4710, of its Application Control Engine (ACE) module, which normally plugs into Cisco 6500 catalyst series switches. “Customers are continually needing to roll out applications and consolidating servers back to the datacentre. The ACE 4710 also gives a carbon footprint reduction since it virtualises what would otherwise be standalone physical devices.”

Cisco also announced a mobile version of its Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) Mobile and a new version, 5.2, of their Cisco ACE XML Gateway Release 5.2.