Moving downstream to provide SMBs and smaller enterprises with high-performance switching capabilities right-sized for their needs, Enterasys Networks has announced two new offerings to its modular switching solutions.

The Enterasys K-Series is aimed at the midsize space and offers automation, visibility and control at the network edge, much like its larger S-Series brethren, said Chris Crowell, Enterasys president and CEO, who introduced the new product line at the Enterasys Americas Partner Conference this week in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

“This is a lower-cost modular solution featuring our CoreFlow2 [ASIC] technology,” Crowell said. “It’s not designed to be a replacement to the S-Series; rather, it fits into a slot that is long overdue for Enterasys.”

CoreFlow2 – Enterasys’ “secret sauce” – is a custom ASIC technology developed by Enterasys that purports to provide greater visibility into critical business applications and enable better control to meet SLAs, according to Enterasys.

The K-Series is designed to address many of the issues SMB and SME customers face as they struggle with the adoption of consumer devices on the corporate network, such as location, identification an management. Additionally, it can intelligently manage individual users, devices and applications, and offers visibility and management to troubleshoot connectivity issues, locate devices and protect sensitive corporate data.

Enterasys is positioning the K-Series as a competitor to the Cisco 4500 and HP 5400 lines, which the company never before had an answer to, Crowell said.

“This line is designed to attack and add incremental revenue, to go after a new market,” he said. “We want to open new doors where we can be competitive in a modular offering in the SMB, SME or the very smart edge.”

Enterasys also announced the Enterasys A-Series A4 next-generation 10/100 stackable switch platform, including high-availability and built-in automation. The A4 is an open standards-based solution designed for entry-level connectivity, but offers enterprise-level performance, reliability and video/voice/data prioritization.

Both the K-Series and the A4 platform are slated for availability in June 2011.

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