Through its acquisition of Phion, Barracuda Networks has launched a line of seven enterprise firewalls meant to consolidate network security devices and reduce management overhead when dealing with numerous distributed firewalls.The firewalls are aimed at the needs of a variety of orgs and priced from $599 for small branch offices to $40,000 for data centers. We spoke with Steve Pao, VP product management, who says the devices are designed to provide the services and optimization today's distributed networks need. The Phion technology was originally developed for an Austrian banking data center that needed 650 firewalls with centralized management; Phion was founded in 2000 and acquired by Barracuda in 2009.

The Barracuda NG firewalls support IPSec and SSL VPNs, Web filtering, and can act as antivirus gateways. The devices are a compilation of technologies developed and acquired by Barracuda Networks over the fast few years, with additional engineering for WAN optimization to save organizations line costs and improve communications. One distinctive feature not offered by many firewall vendors today is the ability to deploy either physical devices or VMware-ready images.

The Barracuda NG line is available immediately in North America with worldwide support. Other markets will be added later.