Interop is underway in New York this week, and WAN optimization vendors are among the newsmakers.

For Stampede Technologies, the emphasis is on small sites where it may not be economical to deploy a high-end WAN optimization controller but where IT buyers want to achieve better application performance.

Stampede is previewing its latest application acceleration technology, which it’s packaging as software that can run on Linux appliances. The new Remote Campus Optimizer is being targeted at OEM partners so they can bundle their devices with Stampede’s WAN optimization technology and provide a cost-effective package for sites such as remote branch offices or small businesses. The software runs on a dedicated appliance and can accelerate protocols including HTTP, MAPI, CIFS, FTP, POP3, and SMTP. Stampede’s technology also tackles compression. The Remote Campus Optimizer will be available in the fourth quarter.

At the other end of the spectrum is Ipanema Technologies, which is demonstrating its new Intelligent Acceleration WAN traffic-management technology. Designed for large enterprises, the technology inspects traffic and performs functions including eliminating redundant transfers and protocol acceleration, depending on the policies set for business critical and non-critical applications. The system automatically adapts parameters in real-time based on an analysis of the traffic mix, user behavior and WAN resource availability, Ipanema says.

The new version improves acceleration of business applications including SAP, Oracle, mail, file transfers, CIFS, and Web. It also taps Ipanema’s existing application usage and quality monitoring capabilities and includes a dedicated acceleration indicator that can calculate response time improvements for each application in real-time.

“Unlike point product offerings, Intelligent Acceleration was designed from scratch to apply on rich traffic mixes and large meshed networks. It’s not limited to file transfer applications between a small number of sites,” said Frank Lyonnet, vice president of product marketing at Ipanema, in a statement.

Intelligent Acceleration is compatible with Ipanema’s existing ip|engine WAN optimization devices and is available now.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.