KEMP Provides Smart Load Balancing

At TechEd 2013 in New Orleans, I had a few minutes to chat with Peter Melerud, executive VP of KEMP Technologies about what his company has been up to. Surely you’re familiar with KEMP. This company builds server load-balancing application delivery controllers (ADCs) that are becoming increasingly popular with small and midsized businesses (SMBs) and now—with its more enterprise-focused solutions—larger companies as well.

April saw the release of the LoadMaster R320 purpose-built load balancer, based on the Dell PowerEdge R320 server platform. The partnership with Dell enabled key optimizations through a couple of Dell capabilities, including the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) and the Integrated Lifecycle Controller. These features let users manage and monitor the Loadmaster and Dell servers through a common enterprise platform. Customers can easily track hardware problems and perform remote management.

Now, to further entice the enterprise crowd—and to fill a gap left behind after Microsoft discontinued Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG)—KEMP has added new security features to its load balancers with its new Edge Security Pack for the KEMP LoadMaster line. The Edge Security Pack (ESP) helps companies protect business-critical, web-facing applications from unauthorized access. As companies increase their deployment of web-facing applications, there is an increasing need for load balancers to provide high availability and minimize application security threats.

"Microsoft may have withdrawn its Forefront TMG from the market, but businesses still need to protect applications such as Exchange and SharePoint from unauthorized use," said Melerud. "The addition of the Edge Security Pack will deliver superior protection alongside high-performance, reliable, and scalable load balancing for the increasing number of hardware or virtual servers used to support the growth in Internet-facing applications."

Melerud laments that the increasing costs and complexities of installing and managing ADC technology means that fewer companies can invest in such solutions—particularly the SMBs that comprise KEMP’s core user base. To that end, Melerud spent some time comparing KEMP’s solutions with those of the higher-profile (and more expensive) F5 Networks. Check out that comparison here.