Appliance Deployment Featured Article

NEI officials say they subscribe to Gartner’s (News - Alert) definition of an appliance as “a computing entity that delivers predefined service(s) through an application-specific interface with no accessible operating software.”

Probably wouldn't find too many people who strenuously disagree with that, either. As NEI (News - Alert) officials note, this definition reflects what enterprise customers want in applications today—"reduced complexity, yet increased security, reliability and manageability." By shipping their applications as appliances, NEI believes, software vendors can meet these customer requirements while also improving their operational effectiveness.

That's why ?NEI’s chosen a flexible engagement model which enables users to select from a set of services designed to streamline all aspects of the product lifecycle: "From project inception through field support, NEI provides design and engineering services that meet stringent industry and international compliance regulations, integration control that produces repeatable builds to lower support costs, and we ship and support products to end customer sites all over the world."

Company officials believe that software vendors have a "unique" set of requirements when faced with the need to lock down and secure the system, as well as reliably update, monitor, track and back-up deployed appliances. They believe they have a product that solves these complexities  -- Securing OS Services and our Smart Services offerings. Customers who use these services, NEI officials assert, "are better able to scale their products to meet specific market needs and focus on innovating and engineering their application; not its form factor, delivery mechanisms, interoperability, backbone OS, or updates and patches." 

NEI offers a spectrum of appliance platforms that address enterprise requirements for performance, cost and versatility, saying their entry-level appliances combine performance and low cost for price-sensitive applications.

About a month ago TMC (News - Alert) reported that NEI published clarifications of the company’s offerings and approach.

One was lifecycle management. With more than 30 standard platforms from which to choose, NEI has one of the largest portfolios of turnkey appliances in the industry. Customers use their product design and integration controls to deploy the best-fit, form and functional platform for their application, company officials say, adding “whether it’s a robust enterprise security appliance or a highly integrated carrier-grade rack mount system.”

Want to learn more about the latest in communications & technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2011, taking place Feb 2-4, 2011, in Miami. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here. And don’t forget to follow the ITEXPO pages on Facebook& Twitter for all the latest updates on the show!