Forum Systems Launches Forum Vantage XML Accelerator for High-Performance

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — December 5, 2005 — Forum Systems, the leader in Web services and SOA security for threat protection and trust management, today announced the availability of Forum Vantage XML Accelerator, a new product designed to provide XML acceleration across networks for secure and optimized delivery of Web Services. XML applications automate interactions, adding more users and transactions from many different sources – at near real-time. The fact that XML messages can consume more than double the bandwidth of traditional binary data formats leads to system-wide performance degradation. Forum Vantage XML Accelerator has been designed to eliminate the XML performance penalty with as much as a 200 percent increase in response times.

Forum Vantageâ„? XML Accelerator is a high performance appliance that leverages a 64-bit platform architecture for XML/SOAP parsing, XML Schema Validation, XPath processing and XSLT functions to streamline the operation, maintenance and security of next generation Application-Oriented Networks (AON). For IT administrators, the burden of unpredictable capacity planning is no longer an issue allowing for on-demand service-levels and a reduction in operational risk. For developers, integration is a simple matter of pointing to a WSDL (Web Services Description Language) file and elimination of error-prone XML Schema validation, complex XSLT code and knowledge of low-level protocols. Forum Vantage XML Accelerator realizes the vision of shared XML processing in the data center for lower total cost of ownership.

“The AON infrastructure overlay adoption wave should be good news for enterprise Web services adoption, which Forrester expects to transform applications and IT systems of all types in the next 10 years,” wrote senior analyst Larry Velez in a recent Forrester Research report. “This adoption wave will trigger exponential growth in XML-based network traffic, accompanied by new security issues that firms will have to manage.”

“Companies looking to implement Service-Oriented Architectures face increasing challenges associated with processing content-intensive, metadata-formatted messages” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. “The biggest challenge is that today’s application servers consume up to 80% of processing capacity on XML parsing, validation and data transformation, even though companies are demanding increasing levels of performance and lower latency. Forum Systems is addressing a significant pain point associated with the performance of SOAs by introducing the Forum Vantage XML Acceleratorâ„? to provide high-performance data center deployments.”

High-performance, Secure, XML Acceleration

Forum Vantage XML Acceleratorâ„? is the third member of the Forum Systems Web Services and SOA security product family that includes the award-winning Forum Sentryâ„? SOA Gateway and Forum XWallâ„? Web Services Firewall with XML Intrusion Prevention and XML Antivirus. “Forum Vantageâ„? is not only a value-add for pure performance needs, but a tool for organizations looking to consolidate hardware within their data center and gain an edge on total cost of ownership”, said Walid Negm, Vice President of Marketing for Forum Systems. “By enabling greater than 10,000 XML messages per second and streaming very large multi-gigabyte files, Forum Vantage XML Acceleratoâ„? is more than 200 times faster than software-based XML parsing and 1.8 to 3.3 times faster than competitive hardware alternatives.”

“Forum Vantage XML Acceleratorâ„? builds upon Forum’s award-winning XML Web services security hardware and software solutions,” said Mamoon Yunus, CTO of Forum Systems. “By focusing on core XML optimization while leveraging off-the-shelf components such as crypto accelerators and 64-bit processors, we have alleviated the performance pain points in today’s SOA networks.”

Pricing and Availability

Forum Vantage XML Acceleratorâ„? is available immediately as 1U Appliance with pricing starting at $45,000.

About Forum Systems

Trustworthy, ubiquitous and robust Web services can only be achieved by combining security controls that are proactive, always on and systematic. Forum Seamless Security Solutions Architecture (Forum S3Aâ„?) is an adaptive approach to building security minded service-oriented applications and data-level networks using life-cycle solutions including vulnerability management, testing systems, firewalls and gateways. Forum products are available as software, PCI-card and appliance options and comply with government requirements including CheckPoint OPSEC Certification, FIPS Certification, Common Criteria EAL 4+ (in process) and JITC DoD PKI Certification. Forum Systems is an active a member of OASIS and WS-I helping mature standards such as WS-I Basic Profiles, SAML and WS-Security. Customers can benefit from Forum technology that is bundled with market-leading products: Microsoft ISA Server 2004, NetContinuum NC-1000 WSE, Crossbeam Systems, Breach Security and Network Engines NS6300X. For more information on adaptive solutions for Web services security visit http://www.forumsys.com .

Forum Systems, Inc. is the Leader in Web Services and SOA Securityâ„? with a comprehensive suite of trust management, threat protection and information assurance solutions for the automated Web. Forum Systems’ flexible hardware, software and embedded products make vibrant business communications possible by actively protecting XML data and Web services across networks and business boundaries. Forum’s products have been chosen by over 150 Fortune 1000 industry leaders and are winners of Network Computing Magazine’s Well-Connected 2004 Award and Product of the Year 2004 Award, Network Computing Magazine’s Editor’s Choice 2003 Award, Network Magazine’s Product of the Year 2003 Award and DEMO 2004 Invitation. Forum XWall Web Services Firewall is the industry’s only XML Firewall selected by InfoWorld LEADERBOARD 2004. Visit Forum at http://www.forumsys.com/ .