Why Redundant Internet Access is Critical

As the cost of Internet connectivity has dropped, while the dependence of organizations on reliable connections has increased, more businesses (and schools, government offices, non-profits, etc.) are taking a hard look at strategies for redundant Internet access (also know as Internet high availabily systems or ISP failover).

Businesses and other organizations are growing increasing reliant on dependable Internet connectivity for access to hosted online services, email, VPN connectivity to remote sites, e-commerce and other applications. Astrocom, a maker of bandwidth management and Internet load balancing appliances that provide uninterrupted Internet access through multiple ISPs, has written a great overview of redundant Internet access.

As Astrocom puts it, "Redundant Internet access (the ability to switch traffic among multiple Internet connections through a technique called multi-homing) is something more and more small and medium-sized companies need. When one link goes down, you get WAN/ISP failover that automatically switches your critical Internet traffic to a functioning link. Meanwhile, bandwidth management guarantees bandwidth to your most important applications."

The company's site also provides white papers that compare their solution to the more expensive and complex border gateway protocol (BGP) approach, as well as competitive comparisons.

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Slash7 on Pimpin' Your Products

Slash7 has written a great post about the right way to promote technology products, Pimpin' Products Ain't Easy. She shows how pimpin' (no "g," that's important) is different from marketing (or at least what technology folks often view marketing as). Then she goes on to describe what pimpin' is and why it's important:

"The act of pimpin’ products (as opposed to 'marketing') never involves any kind of questionable tactics. Pimpin’ means putting your product’s best foot forward. Accen-tuate the pos-it-ive. It means not shirking from self-promotion, and shouting your product’s position, features and benefits loud and clear. It means making the acquisition (download, purchase, whatever) process as simple as possible."

The post provides a helpful list of "Pimpin' Missteps" to avoid (such as "Don’t… be vague so visitors go “huh? what the heck is this?” when they load the page.") as well as a number of "Pimpin-est Examples" to illustrate her ideas. Read the whole thing.

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Jumpnode Network Monitoring Featured in eWeek

eWeek recently published a piece titled "'Tiny Metal Box' Woos VARs and MSPs" on how Jumpnode is attracting VARs and MSPs to sell its network monitoring and remote access product. "Looking to bring appliance-enabled software services to smaller companies, Jumpnode Systems has created a reseller program and also began signing MSPs to use its appliance for monitoring and remote management."

Jumpnode has also just released a new white paper titled "System Architecture—A Critical Element When Evaluating a Network Monitoring System" which outlines the advantages of its Appliance-Enabled Software (AeS) services architecture for network monitoring. Worth checking out.

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Network Monitoring with Belkin Pulse

SmallNetBuilder recently published an interesting article about the new Belkin Pulse network monitoring system. The piece starts with a primer on why network monitoring is important and the most important devices and services to monitor, followed by a comprehensive review of the Belkin offering, which is based on the Jumpnode AeS architecture.

Author Doug Reid concludes by saying, “Pulse is surprisingly powerful and functional. The Pulse communicates over 168-bit encryption to a centralized service, enabling a network manager or administrator to access a very informative network Dashboard from anywhere they have an Internet connection. The Pulse even enables remote access to network devices behind a firewall, if you choose to set it up. Moreover, the Pulse provides a nice level of redundancy, enabling alarming of your network even if the network itself goes down! The built-in analog modem provided excellent network alarming capability, successfully notifying of a loss of broadband connectivity…Belkin’s Pulse is an easy ‘NOC-in-a-box’ solution to network monitoring, providing the small network manager with capabilities typical in much larger networks. The Pulse makes it easy to get an alarming solution up and running quickly, and it provides a high degree of functionality…Pulse may look simple, but it really has a lot under the hood!”

What I found most fascinating however were the comments—a lively debate the cost-effectiveness of the solution. I think the pro-Pulse forces won the day, but the great thing about feedback like this is that it enables you, ultimately, to judge for yourself.

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Gotta Start Somewhere

Welcome to the TechMarketCentral blog, which will eventually be heavily populated with posts about B2B technology topics - software, hardware, services and telecom. My current interests include network monitoring, anything related to ITIL, VoIP, security and outsourcing among other topics, but will vary and likely expand over time. Hope you enjoy it.

A little about me: I'm a technology guy with 20 years of experience as an engineer and marketer in B2B IT software, hardware and services companies. Old enough to understand these areas yet young enough to still be passionate about innovations.

BTW, I take no position in the Microsoft vs. Linux vs. Mac wars. Between the five computers in my office, I’m running Mac OS, Linux and two versions of Windows. Choice is a good thing. I don’t care how much money Bill Gates has—I just think he could afford a decent haircut.

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