REDMOND, Wash., Oct. 24, 2000 — In the industry’s leading independent caching competition, Microsoft â Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000 (ISA Server), a member of the Microsoft .NET enterprise server family, demonstrated its superior Web-caching performance. The Measurement Factory Inc., of Boulder, Colo., applied the Web Polygraph test to 31 caches from 15 different organizations; ISA Server was rated No. 1 in price/performance and received high honors in throughput (requests per second) and in hit ratio.
“We’re thrilled with these results. The Cache-Off proves that ISA Server delivers exceptional performance at the best value in the market,”
said Paul Flessner, senior vice president of .NET Enterprise Servers at Microsoft.
“Customers want fast and secure Web access that’s easy to manage. With the best price/performance ratio in the industry and exceptional throughput, ISA Server’s integrated Web cache and firewall can satisfy the most demanding Internet environments and lower network costs, while also delivering enterprise security and policy-based management.”
ISA Server is a member of the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server family of server applications for quickly building, deploying and managing integrated, Web-based solutions.
No. 1 in Price/Performance
Caching solutions differ in throughput, hit ratio and price; the price/performance ratio provides customers with a standard metric that can be used to compare products on a normalized basis. ISA Server posted the top score with 78 hits/second per $1,000 and 145 requests/second per $1,000, outperforming every other entry by 16 to 600 percent, clearly establishing ISA Server as the best value for delivering fast Internet access. The price was based on ISA Standard Edition, priced at $1,499 per processor.
Top Five in Overall Performance
Demanding Internet environments require high-performance cache servers. ISA Server’s 2,083 requests/second secured its position in the top five overall performance leaders, more than twice as high as the average product throughput of 887 requests/second.
Significant Bandwidth Savings
Higher hit ratios translate to bandwidth cost savings and improved Web response by delivering more content from the cache rather than from the origin server. ISA Server achieved a fourth-place finish with a document hit ratio of 55.2 percent out of a possible 58 percent, demonstrating its ability to deliver exceptional bandwidth savings.
The ISA Server cache accelerates users’ access to the Web and saves bandwidth by storing popular Web content on the corporate network, eliminating the need for repeated retrieval of the same content. Web server administrators can use it to accelerate access to a Web server or e-commerce application, to offload processing from the Web servers, or to more efficiently distribute their content to end users. ISA Server includes high-performance RAM caching, hierarchical caching and scheduled content download.
ISA Server Redefines Caching With Integrated Security and Policy-Based Management
While the Cache-Off results establish ISA Server as a leader in caching performance, customers want more than a fast Web cache; they require Internet connectivity that is secure and manageable as well. ISA Server eliminates the traditional tradeoff between network security and performance by integrating an enterprise firewall with the Web cache. Whether installed separately as a firewall and Web cache, or integrated on a single machine, ISA Server provides a unified policy, access control and management interface.
“With ISA Server, customers have a solution that provides exceptional Web access performance and strong Internet security,”
said Flessner.
“This product embodies our commitment to secure computing that gives our customers the performance they need to compete in the digital age.”
The RC1 prerelease version of ISA Server and more information on the product are available at http://www.microsoft.com/isaserver/ . The product will be released by the end of 2000. The official Cache-Off results and independent analysis are available at http://www.measurement-factory.com/results/.
About Microsoft ISA Server
Microsoft ISA Server is an enterprise firewall and Web cache server that enables IT administrators for businesses of all sizes to provide controlled, secure and fast Internet access for their organization. Building on the security and manageability of the Microsoft Windows® 2000 platform, ISA Server provides a sophisticated multilayer enterprise firewall and a high-performance Web cache to control, secure and accelerate business on the Internet.
About Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers
The Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers are a comprehensive family of server applications for quickly building, deploying and managing integrated, Web-based solutions. Designed to deliver mission-critical performance, the .NET Enterprise Servers are built from the ground up to provide the foundation for next-generation XML-enabled applications. The servers include SQL Server™ 2000, Host Integration Server 2000, Exchange 2000 Server, BizTalk™
Server 2000, Application Center 2000, Commerce Server 2000, Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000 and Mobile Information 2001 Server.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft, Windows and BizTalk are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. If you would like to speak to any customers or analysts about ISA Server, contact Barbara Colnar at (425) 467-5059 or [email protected].
