BILLERICA, MA September 26, 2005 SilverBack® Technologies, Inc., the industrys leading provider of service delivery platforms that allow service providers to profitably enter the managed services business, today announced the SilverStreak Management Tunnel (SMT). The SMT is the industrys first fully secure, bi-directional communications mechanism that eliminates the need for traditional virtual private networks (VPN), reducing operations costs, assuring secure remediation and a faster problem resolution cycle.
Available as an add-on product to the companys flagship service delivery platform, the patent-pending SilverStreak Management Tunnel allows managed service providers (MSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to provide secure remote monitoring, management and remediation to monitored IP devices. Remote management is possible without the traditional cost and labor and management associated with setting up individual VPN connections on a customer-by-customer basis.
For the first time, service providers can use a Web console and dynamic HTTPS connection to remotely administer client servers, routers, environmentals and critical applications. This on-demand remediation eliminates more than 90% of onsite visits, provides a faster and more accurate diagnosis and significantly increases first-call resolution.
This capability is exceptionally important considering the need to have an alternate means of connectivity that doesnt rely on a network connection, said James Carter, CTO of The Integration Works of Santa Ana, CA. For The Integration Works, however, the emphasis is on reducing operational support costs. We can cut back on the number of house calls we need to make since now a lot of standard remediation can be achieved remotely through the Tunnel. We can redeploy that extra time on strengthening client relationships and positioning ourselves as a true trusted advisor.
When MSPs receive an alarm from a client site whether its associated with email, a router, switch, firewall, application, database; or even an X-ray machine they can immediately initiate a secure tunnel to perform remote diagnosis and remediation without the need to reconfigure any firewalls. After the problem is resolved, the dynamic tunnel is torn down and new connections initiated to the next system requiring attention.
The Tunnel is also ideal for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs); hardware and other equipment vendors who have geographically dispersed customers that require remote support. Many of these vendors are exploring delivering their solutions as "software as a service." Because VPNs are labor-intensive and expensive, they are not always an optimal solution, as ISVs do not want to instrument anything at the client site.
Installing VPNs can be cumbersome and cost-prohibitive, not to mention insecure. SilverBacks Tunnel bypasses the need to install VPN clients so that we can focus on remotely managing our support needs and deliver proactive customer care at reduced operational costs, said Sam Straughan, Witt Biomedicals Vice President of Customer Services. Because our clients are hospitals, including large integrated delivery networks (IDNs), the ability to access critical applications on a 24x7x365 basis even in rare situations where network connectivity may be disrupted is also highly important.
Additionally, the Tunnel is of exceptional interest to many utilities managing power grids; water and oil pipelines that have closed and secure networks that cannot be managed by traditional VPNs yet still require the benefits that remote monitoring and remediation through a central console can provide, said John Igoe, COO of SilverBack.
More Secure than a VPN The SilverStreak Management Tunnel is a truly secure method of remote communications. Unlike VPNs, service providers are not required to modify firewall configurations. All communications are initiated from the client network and are transmitted over industry-standard 128-bit SSL encryption. Service providers can choose to enable or disable tunneling capabilities for all their customers, or limit tunneling to particular customer sites. And because accessible devices never appear on the public Internet, data transmitted over tunnels is fully protected against general attacks a limitation of popular remote control packages.
Trouble-free Setup SilverStreak Management Tunnels minimize operational costs associated with service delivery as well as reducing costly onsite visits. Unlike popular remote control solutions, providers are not required to install a client application on each device. Instead, users download a single SilverStreak a small piece of software bundled with SilverBack for remote polling and data collection onto each clients network and enable outbound HTTPS traffic. Providers can terminate sessions once they have managed the alert to resolution and free the tunnel for use with another client and additional issue.
Service organizations worldwide use SilverBack to conduct remote monitoring, alerting, remediation and automated management of network devices (or any device with an IP address) across any number of individual end points.
The Company most recently announced its next-generation product, Datacenter Enterprise, a service delivery platform that benefits service providers (and software vendors selling software as a service) by significantly lowering the costs and expediting the initial set-up, provisioning and ongoing management of customer networks and security. For example, the new technology allows service providers to update a policy once and then push out the update to thousands of customers simultaneously, assuring consistent service delivery and improving customer satisfaction.
Pricing & Availability The SMT is available immediately. Pricing starts at 00 U.S. list for one concurrent connection license and 00 for a pack of three concurrent connection licenses.
About SilverBack The choice of the VAR500 and other elite organizations, SilverBack's expertise lies in helping product-focused resellers transform their businesses into services-focused operations. SilverBack has designed and perfected a "franchise" approach that accelerates the transition from a low margin, one-time sale to a high margin, recurring revenue model. Its ServiceAccelerator program combines integrated IT and security monitoring software with the company's proven sales, marketing and operations best practices to help its partners see successful results immediately. SilverBack technology significantly reduces operations costs at set-up and over the life of the customer contract, facilitating mass customization of services and assuring high margins.
Visit www.silverbacktech.com.
