Network appliance vendor Redline has launched a new enterprise product designed to speed up the running of web services within an organisation and across its customer, supplier and partner supply chain.

The company is hoping that companies adopting web services will create demand for its new off-the-shelf accelerator box, known as the Enterprise Web I/O Accelerator EX3250.

Redline is best known for products designed to improve the performance of websites through accelerated web I/O technology.

A Layer 7 data centre appliance, the EX3250 is designed to capitalise on the use of web services to integrate enterprise resource planning products in the back-end of enterprises' IT systems, and customer relationship management applications in the front-end.

"Companies looking to run their web services applications faster need make no changes to their existing infrastructure," said Paul Gracie, sales director at Redline.

"All they need do is drop the box in and they will get the benefits of faster response straight away."

The EX3250's core web I/O acceleration technology acts as a TCP and HTTP transaction management system to optimise communication between origin servers and end users.

It also is compatible with the common web services protocol standards, including XML and Java, and can automatically enable SSL security. A rules-based engine allows customisation for use with bespoke applications.

But an analyst warned that awareness of the issues with web services is still low.

Clive Longbottom, service director at analyst Quocirca, said: "If they say 'we've got an accelerator for web services' they'll get nowhere, because people are not yet aware that they need accelerating. I think they're a little bit ahead of the market."