Appliance Deployment Featured Article

Time to market matters. Recently, when Lightspeed Systems saw an opening in the education market for an appliance that could be deployed to help schools and libraries protect children from inappropriate Web content, it realized that it needed a partner that could help quickly develop the appliance and do it fast.

So they looked to NEI (News - Alert), a well known provider in the appliance deployment space.

“We chose NEI because we were certain that they could deliver the results we needed to hit our market window,” Rob Chambers, VP of Product Development at Lightspeed Systems, said in a blog post. “NEI’s system integration expertise allowed us to aggressively accelerate our go-to-market schedule and the company’s manufacturing resources and support services allowed us to deliver a more effective design - increasing the competitiveness of our product and the value we are able to deliver to our target customers.”

The federal Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) mandates that all school and library computers have Web filtering functions in place that block dangerous and inappropriate content from getting to children. Balancing filtering with the access to the Internet that students need for research and learning is not an easy feat, however.

“The challenge for educational companies is to be able to provide school districts with fast, easy CIPA-compliant filtering and access to engaging, educational content – all at an affordable price point,” noted the blog.

And that is where Lightspeed’s Bottle Rocket (News - Alert) appliance comes in. It provides advanced network filtering to meet the needs of the education market simply and affordably. The company partnered with NEI for the application’s deployment, solution design and system integration services. In turn, the appliance was launched in less than 60 days.

Bottle Rocket is preloaded on NEI’s S-1200 R3 platform, incorporating Intel’s (News - Alert) advanced Xeon (Sandy Bridge-based) microprocessor. It uses the industry’s most advanced processing and storage components to deliver CIPA-compliant network filtering and reduced data rate latencies with scalable expansion capabilities, featuring support for mobile devices and Lightspeed Systems’ integrated collaborative learning management system named “My Big Campus,” according to the blog post.

In addition to its leadership in the appliance marketplace, NEI also brings to the table its position as a Dell (News - Alert) OEM Solutions Premier Partner and as an Intel ISA Associate Member. This helps it incorporate the latest technology into its appliances.

For instance, as a member of Intel’s Intelligent Systems Alliance program, NEI can take advantage of select extended-life CPUs offered by Intel only for Dell OEM (News - Alert) Solutions’ XL products, according to a TMCnet article written earlier this month.

“Lightspeed Systems remains committed to working with schools to accomplish amazing things, both on the network and in the classroom, and values partners such as NEI that enable us to achieve this mission,” Chambers concluded.