Radware Revives Former Nortel Alteon Product Line

"This shows the commitment we have made to Alteon customers," said Ilan Kinreich, Radware's COO. "This is a high-end platform and a very powerful device we can offer as an upgrade, but most importantly, it continues the product line."

The Alteon 5412 runs the same Alteon OS as before, but according to Radware, can now support 20 Gbps of application switching throughput capacity, up to 340,000 Layer 4 transactions per second, and has four 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports and twelve 1-Gigabit Ethernet ports. Among other features, it'll ship with dual power supply configurations, and the 5412 also leverages Virtual Matrix Architecture, Radware's, which is used to processing traffic between ports.

Radware will sell the Alteon 5412 through existing Alteon resellers and distributors, and its target markets are carriers, service providers and data center customers in the U.S. and Europe, Kinreich said. It has also revived a marketing campaign -- a superhero metaphor -- first used by Alteon WebSystems before it was acquired by Nortel, and in Radware's version uses 3-D graphic animation and a movie-style trailer to announce "Alteon Is Back."

Kinreich said Radware has been successful in retaining the majority of solution providers who previously sold Nortel Alteon products, and that Radware would announce additional Alteon line debuts in the new year.

"We inherited an R&D operation outside of our original locations, so we have a lot more people around the world now," he said. "It has gone very smoothly and quite successfully. We're behind the first major phase of integration, and there will be many more advanced features coming in 2010."

Radware said it would acquire Nortel's Layer 4 through Layer 7 application delivery portfolio back in February, and the acquisition was completed on March 31.

Tel Aviv, Israel-based Radware has had a strong 2009. In its most recent quarterly earnings, posted Nov. 3, the company reported revenues of $29.2 million, up 24 percent from the $23.5 million it reported in the third quarter of 2008.