Neoteris Inc. on Monday announced three new models of its "instant virtual extranet" (IVE) appliances that offer varying levels of scalability, failover capabilities and management functions.

All of the Neoteris devices, which are intended to be an alternative to virtual private network (VPN) software and gateways, offer secure SSL-based connections to a range of Web and other enterprise applications for remote or transient users, requiring only a browser on the client side.

The new Neoteris Access Series devices come in three models: the 1000, 3000 and 5000. The low-end Access 1000 is targeted at companies that need to support a limited number of remote employees, all of which have authorization to access the same group of applications. The device supports up to 250 simultaneous users.

The Access 3000 model supports up to 1,000 simultaneous users and offers support for group-based policies, says Vivian Ganitsky, manager of product marketing for Neoteris, based in Mountain View, Calif. That enables users to define more granular authorization policies for internal employees and business partners, down to the file level. The 3000 also can be configured in a redundant pair fashion, with one device backing up another in case of failure.

Neoteris supports both active/active mode, where the two devices continually split the processing load, and active/passive, where the backup kicks in only when needed. In either case, user sessions are not disrupted should a failure occur, Ganitsky says.

At the high end, the Access 5000 model supports up to 2,500 simultaneous users. It brings redundancy to another level, with the ability to group multiple appliances in a cluster, not just two as with the 3000. The 5000 also offers an HTTP compression card that Ganitsky says improves performance by 50% or more for Web applications, even as compared to accessing the applications via a direct Web connection. Compression is especially useful for "thick" Web applications, such as Outlook Web Access and Lotus iNotes, she says.

Access Series appliances range in price from $9,995 for an Access 1000 model that supports 50 simultaneous users to $114,995 for an Access 5000 unit that supports 2,500 simultaneous users. The products will be available at the end of November.