The term data center infrastructure management is a popular one these days, and we’re hearing it a lot at Cisco (News 
- Alert) Live this week. One company that plays in this space is Opengear.
Opengear develops what it calls “smart solutions for critical infrastructure management.” Its Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) appliances secure and simplify remote monitoring, access and control of critical IT and network, and operations technology and industrial control systems. These solutions come in the form of smart appliances that integrate next-generation automation and out-of-band management technologies. (The company did a video interview about its remote management solution with TMCnet at the recent Interop (News - Alert) show.
In an interview with TMCnet this week at Cisco Live, Bob Waldie, chairman of the company, said that companies are increasingly interested in remotely managing data centers, but that to do that they need to ensure those data centers stay online at all times.
To give them that assurance, Opengear (News - Alert) provides appliances through which they can access multiple services providers and create primary and secondary/backup connections. The company also offers solutions that can monitor and control power, smoke detectors, water detectors and more at remote sites.
“We’re seeing this melding of OT and IT,” says Waldie, referring to operations staff and IT staff.
Also this week at Cisco Live, Opengear announced greater support for Cisco networks and enhanced security and management features. That includes what Opengear says are best-of-breed cryptographic methods to secure authentication; support for USB console ports on Cisco devices; RANCID configuration monitoring; and support for redundant management platform connections. RANCID is an open software application used by network operations center staff to monitor the hardware and software configuration of network devices, and track and provide notifications of those changes.
Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli
