Strangeloop Networks Introduces Industry’s First Framework-Specific Appliances for Accelerating Dynamic Web Applications

May 21, 2007; 07:55 AM
Strangeloop Networks today introduced the Strangeloop AppScaler™ family—the industry’s first framework-specific appliances for accelerating dynamic Web applications without changes to software coding or hardware infrastructure. With the Strangeloop AppScaler appliance enterprises can boost the performance and scalability of Microsoft ASP.NET/AJAX-based applications tenfold, reduce bandwidth costs by up to 80 percent, free developers from costly application tuning and deliver new features and applications faster and at lower cost.

“Enterprises are taking advantage of the social-networking explosion by creating dynamic, interactive and personalized Web capabilities such as blogs, user-generated content and personalized views, and ASP.NET is an increasingly popular framework for this development. Consequently, ASP.NET performance is approaching mission-critical status," said Zeus Kerravala, Yankee Group senior vice president of Enterprise Research. "It is no surprise, then, that our research shows ASP.NET performance problems rank as one of the top issues facing enterprise IT managers today, so Strangeloop has targeted a fast-growing need with the introduction of its ASP.NET-specific AppScaler solution.”

The Strangeloop AppScaler frees enterprises from the application-tuning cycle and allows them to deliver new features and performance without sacrificing one for the other. It is a plug-and-play appliance that is deployed “in line” between an enterprise’s Web servers and the load balancer; no changes are required to other infrastructure or the applications to be accelerated. Whereas traditional acceleration devices merely identify particular applications and route them accordingly, the Strangeloop AppScaler goes further, putting ASP.NET and AJAX traffic at line speed through a battery of framework-specific acceleration techniques. By optimizing data-handling behaviors in real-time, for the application as well as the browser, the Strangeloop AppScaler addresses key performance factors, including payload, roundtrips and browser/server compute time and dramatically enhances load-balancer performance. The Strangeloop AppScaler simultaneously reduces the Web site’s response times and increases the number of transactions the application can accommodate without degradation.

"The performance of a company's Web applications must be a priority at the CXO level, not just a pain point for the IT director or the application developer," said Stephen Forte, chief technology officer, Corzen Inc and a Microsoft Regional Director. "For developers to build new and more sophisticated applications, rather than fix existing ones to increase performance, companies need to explore the best solutions available that most effectively optimize their applications. The Strangeloop AppScaler appliance is a groundbreaking product and promises to do exactly that.”

“More and more enterprises are placing their bets on ASP.NET,” said Jonathan Bixby, president and chief executive officer with Strangeloop Networks. “They are rapidly rolling out new applications and, just as rapidly, running into performance challenges. Strangeloop offers a unique solution that lets our customers scale their applications without an army of programmers and without dropping performance. Most importantly, with Strangeloop in their data centers, our customers can get back to building the features and applications their business needs to succeed.”

The Strangeloop AppScaler appliance—based on 64-bit, multiprocessor commercial computing —is in beta trials. Commercial availability is scheduled for September 2007.

About Strangeloop Networks

Strangeloop Networks accelerates dynamic Web applications with unique, framework-specific solutions that require no changes to software coding or hardware infrastructure and that frees developers to focus on providing enterprises with value-added features. With the Strangeloop AppScaler for Microsoft ASP.NET and AJAX, enterprises dramatically shorten code cycles, improve application performance and throughput, more efficiently use bandwidth, achieve greater return on their investment in information technology (IT) staff and network resources and boost customer satisfaction. Strangeloop is based in Vancouver, B.C. For more information, visit www.strangeloopnetworks.com.