Network Critical Selected as a 2012 Red Herring Top 100 Europe Award Winner!

Network Critical selected as a 2012 Red Herring Top 100 Europe
Amsterdam, Netherlands – Red Herring announced its Top 100 award in recognition of the leading private companies from Europe, celebrating these startups’ innovations and technologies across their respective industries.
Red Herring’s Top 100 Europe list has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising new companies and entrepreneurs. Red Herring editors were among the first to recognize that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Salesforce.com, YouTube, and eBay would change the way we live and work.
“Choosing the companies with the strongest potential was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of candidates from across Europe to the Top 100 Winners. We believe Network Critical embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture. Network Critical should be proud of its accomplishment, as the competition was the strongest it has ever been.”
Red Herring’s editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, management quality, strategy, and market penetration. This assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the track record and standing of startups relative to their peers, allowing Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list a valuable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the most promising new business models in Europe.

Overcoming Sales Myopia

Myopia is the word optometrist’s use for “shortsightedness.” You can see up close but the big, far away picture is a blur. Metaphorically, many sales professionals suffer from this myopia when developing solutions for their hard fought prospects and customers.

You cold call. You network. You follow-up leads. You attend trade shows. You advertise. You prospect. These activities fill your day in the hopes of finding another new account. Then you talk about problems and solutions. You make presentations. You handle objections. You buy lunch. You get engineers involved. You fend off competing solutions. You negotiate pricing, delivery and support. Finally, you get an order!

Needless to say, there is a lot of work on the path between prospect and order. So, when you finally get the order you want to make it a big as possible. What if you could add 10% or 15% to every order you close? That is a relatively small percentage but it can add up over the course of a year or a career. That extra revenue per sale could be just enough to get you on the Top Performer list, to get you that Hawaii trip or even to put you into the next tax bracket.

Think about how much work goes into getting a sale. So, once you are “in the door” you have to ask yourself, “How can I broaden the solution to get the maximum amount of this customer’s budget in my order book?” Adding Network Access to your design is an often overlooked revenue enhancer that is simple, quick and solution neutral.

The prospect may be adding nodes, tightening security, enhancing monitoring or upgrading technology. They are focusing on the initial application for which the budget was approved. This is where the savvy sales pro has an opportunity to create extra value, strengthen the solution, create competitive barriers and increase the size of the order.

Taps and Network Access products are necessary elements to implement many IT projects. However, they are often not given much thought in the design process. By discussing taps and access devices early, and adding them into the design, you can differentiate your proposal while increasing your revenue opportunity. Taps are broadly used so you can add them into a wide variety of applications. Once familiar with their use, you will find these products to be a simple and lucrative addition to your product portfolio. While taps are likely not what the prospect is initially asking for, there is a good chance that, if you bring it up, you will find that they will be needed somewhere in the project design.

Spending a little time with a tap vendor like Network Critical can help you increase your sales revenue and strengthen your position as a valuable consultant to your customers. You can learn more about taps and network access devices at http://www.networkcritical.com.

Being short sighted about solution development is a sales trap that is easy to fix. Look beyond the requested application and offer a complete solution. Sharpen your network access vision and you can grow revenue with every sale.

VoIP – The New DT

By: Dan O’Donnell

When I was working for the telephone company in the monopoly days we used to joke when Telecom Managers gave us a difficult time. We said to them, “You know that hum in your ear when you pick up the telephone? You want to keep it, don’t you?” The underlying threat being, I have the power to take away your Dial Tone.

Well, the monopoly days are long gone. New technology has created a variety of solutions to get that hum in your ear. In fact, when using mobile devices, there is no dial tone at all. Through all this change, however, there is one constant…there is no tolerance for unreliable service. Over the years, the monopoly phone system has created an expectation for five nines reliability, 99.999% uptime.

Advances in speed and reliability of the internet over the years provide a good network for VoIP calling. Mixing voice, data, video and mobile calling on the same IP network, however, presents some unique challenges.

Voice calls have no tolerance for delay and require packets to arrive in the same order as they were sent whereas most data protocols can tolerate various levels of delay. Having these different protocols running on the same network requires unique priority assignments for different applications called Quality of Service (QoS) designations.

Security is another issue that must be addressed on VoIP networks. VoIP systems are open to attacks just like any other device or end point connected to the internet. Further, different types of security devices are often needed for voice and data services.

Managing VoIP networks can be very efficient. As noted above, though, they also have special monitoring, management and security requirements. Fortunately, there are many specialized appliances available to provide these services. The critical foundation for cost effective and efficient VoIP management is a flexible access management system. All links should be monitored and managed. All links thus require multiple appliances. Developing a sound monitoring strategy is necessary to provide the reliability, availability and control needed for VoIP networks while helping manage the appliance costs.

Next generation network access systems can aggregate multiple links into a single appliance. Because VoIP links have lower bandwidth requirements, the aggregation ratio can be very high allowing significant CAPEX savings on expensive appliances. Another cost and efficiency feature of access devices is filtering. This allows the attached appliances to only process targeted protocols, further reducing throughput to the monitoring device and allowing more efficient operation.

Using the internet for voice, data, video and mobile communications is very efficient. Developing a monitoring strategy built around a next generation network access solution such as the AFS by Network Critical, will provide the foundation for high performance, high availability, robust security and reduced cost.

For more information about the AFS and Network Critical go to www.networkcritical.com.

Virtually Simple

By Dan O’Donnell

Live simple. What a nice concept. Our lives in the technology industry, however, seem to be all about conquering the complicated rather than pursuing the simple.

Mobility, virtualization, more data, faster links, new applications and increasing vulnerability all require complex and sophisticated systems to manage and protect networks. Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure growth is increasing bandwidth requirements. Appliances are becoming more specialized so more are required. Connecting the tools without impacting network availability and managing all the appliances at 10Gbps link speeds is now becoming its own specialty.

A Gartner report, “Emerging Technology Analysis: Hosted Virtual Desktops” says the number of virtual desktops worldwide will increase to 66 million by 2014. While this growth of virtual technology is efficient for businesses, it adds complexity to network and application management. The need for greater visibility into network performance and application performance will increase just as dramatically as the growth of network bandwidth and virtual desktops.

Boiling it all down, there is a need to pursue simplicity in this ever more complicated environment. Time spent chasing network issues when the problem is with an application is time wasted. Time spent drilling down through layers and layers of analysis on 10Gbps link traffic can be frustrating while clients are experiencing outages or response time issues. Resolving performance issues proactively and optimizing network performance are more worthy pursuits than troubleshooting problems.

A side note on the business perspective of simple proactive network management…A team focused on trouble shooting is considered a cost center. A team focused on improving network performance and IT ROI is considered a strategic asset to the company.

So, in pursuit of a simple answer, what about a unified system providing end-to-end performance visibility across the network, allowing quick isolation of the root cause of performance issues? What about a solution that solves complex application issues simply? What about a couple of simple tools that are easy to deploy and take only a few RUs of rack space? What about connecting all your 1Gbps links through a port aggregator rolling them up to a few high-speed links for consolidated management? What about proactive network management, resolving issues before the clients even notice problems?

The Network Critical AFS port aggregator and the Visual Networks VPM Xpress 10G combine to provide a complete yet simple solution for link aggregation, network and application management. The AFS and Xpress solution allows network managers in virtual environments, carrier and cloud networks an efficient, simple solution to proactive network and application management.

Simple is good. Follow the links below for more information:

View the Network Critical AFS port aggregator here
Download the Network Critical Aggregating Filtering System (AFS) datasheet here
View the Visual Networks VPM Xpress 10G here
Download the Visual Networks VPM Xpress brochure here

Get Noticed in 2012

By: Dan O’Donnell

Remember Rodney Dangerfield, the comedian whose signature line was “I don’t get no respect.” Those with jobs in IT, Cyber Security, Networking and the like know the feeling. When things go right (which takes a lot of dedication, specialized knowledge and hard work) nobody notices. When things go wrong (which can happen no matter how hard you work to keep things humming) the entire company is screaming like a banshee on steroids. Suddenly, everyone knows your name.

Sales guys get noticed when they sell things. They get trips to Tahiti, awards and a lot of positive recognition. Marketing develops programs and ads that are creative and widely publicized. Engineering develops cool designs that turn into products everyone can see. Even the guys from Finance are always making charts and presentations to the CEO showing their ROI calculations and how to finance new projects.

How can IT and Networking demonstrate their positive contributions to the organization? The key is to look at your job in a new way. Categorize, quantify and report on your contributions. Network Security, for example, keeps bad things from happening that could ruin a company. Theft of confidential customer information, leakage of classified product designs, external hacks that slow or block system access are a few examples of bad things that the Network Security group helps prevent. When things go right these issues do not exist so it is hard to quantify the contributions. However, there are industry reports that track these trends that can be used to set baselines.

Using the Network Security example, a department head can develop a set of indices setting Key Performance Indicators based on industry norms for a variety of network and security metrics. Then correlate the economic impact of meeting and exceeding these metrics. What you will have is a report that shows the ongoing financial benefit that sound security practices and procedures can bring to the company every day. Remember, money not spent, is profit.

The idea here is to quantify and report on the positive contributions that are made every day. Take the technical jargon out of the reports. Resist the urge to discuss the benefits of dual stack routers for IPv6 conversion (save that for departmental meetings). The CEO is less interested in how you do it but keenly interested in the contribution to the bottom line. The CEO is a business person and his/her interest is shareholder return. Show that your ideas are necessary to protect the company brand, to create revenue, or to reduce risk and liability.

Finally, be proactive with these ideas. Develop your business oriented reports and ask for time to present. In 2012, resolve to take a quarterly trip in the elevator to the top floor. Show your value to the company. Perhaps, you too, will be on a plane to Tahiti with the Sales leaders.

That’s So 80′s

By Dan O’Donnell

It is time to take a trip in the Wayback Machine. Do you remember your first cell phone? It weighed a few pounds, was as big as a brick and had no apps. But you marveled over the new invention and the clarity of the communication. That was because, compared to the pay phone, walkie-talkie or pager, it was a technological leap of unimaginable proportion. On top of that, it was a major status symbol to have that little antenna on your back windshield. So, comparing that cell phone to previous technology, it looked pretty good.

Now what happens when you compare it forward to, say, an iPhone? Obviously, it does not compare nearly as favorable. It looks heavy, awkward, expensive and of extremely limited functionality.

Here is another 80’s communication marvel, the Digital PBX. Wow, if you were working in an office at that time it changed the way you did business. There were features like integrated Voice Mail so you could get detailed voice messages if you were not at your desk rather than a stack of those little paper slips stuck on a sharp pole near an inbox. There were also a host of other productivity improving features for the office worker. The Digital PBX was smaller than its analog predecessors (1 refrigerator-sized cabinet compared to 7 refrigerators for analog), used less power and could easily add lines by plugging in additional cards on the shelf.

Once again, let’s compare it to today’s soft switches and VoIP systems. Of course, the forward comparison has the old Digital PBX looking expansive, expensive, slow and inflexible.

Now let’s reset the time machine to present day and look at a typical data access switch architecture using shelf and cards in a rack. Compared to the expensive, refrigerator-sized cabinets of the past, the shelf and cards look pretty good. Over the years, they have increased density up to about 8, sometimes 12, ports per card allowing perhaps 48+ ports per shelf. Each shelf uses only about 5 Rack Units for its row of cards and less power than the standalone cabinets. The feature content allows for increased productivity in the data center by enabling efficient utilization of network tools and appliances.

Looking forward, however, the shelf and card systems may be going the way of the refrigerator-sized cabinets and cell phone bricks of the 80’s. As new technology and innovative designs update architecture, density, power consumption and flexibility continue to improve. One example is the AFS system by Network Critical. The AFS is a new data access switch that provides a non-blocking 960Gbps backplane with 48 10Gbps access ports in a single, yes ONE, rack unit of valuable data center space. The fully-functional, fully-loaded system consumes only 150 watts using its dual redundant power supplies. The cost per port is a dramatic reduction from the legacy shelf and card systems as well.

It is fun to look back in time to gauge our technological progress. However, the moral of this story is that it is easy to compare today to yesterday because we have 100% visibility. When investing for the future, whether it is equipment, money or people, one is well served by changing the paradigm of analysis. Do not use yesterday as your baseline, use tomorrow.

IPv6 RU Ready?

By: Dan O’Donnell

I have been using these texting acronyms when communicating with my high school daughter thinking I was being very current and cool using their language. “ru ready?” “im here” and so on. Well I was shocked when she told me the other day, “no one uses those terms anymore; everyone has keyboards and can type in English.” Of course, she was referring to their smart phones. Oh well, I thought, technology!

That “everyone” has a smart phone is a key driver for the movement to IPv6. The proliferation of devices with IP addresses including mobile devices, laptops and tablets is exhausting the available pool of IPv4 addresses. This change will eventually have a profound effect on networks. Here are some interesting numbers:

IPv4 allows for a pool of about four billion addresses. IPv6, using a 128-bit address supports 3.4 x 1038 addresses. Now, for you trivia experts, the number is called 340 undecillion. To further amaze and bedazzle your friends over a cocktail, here is the number of addresses available in IPv6: 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456. You will need a big cocktail napkin to write that down.

So what does this mean for your network? Today, not much. Less than 1% of internet traffic consists of IPv6 and most devices today do not support IPv6. However, planning for the inevitable change is happening now. It is time to start getting familiar with the new format and asking your vendors for their IPv6 evolution plan. Ipv4 and IPv6 do not play well together but they can coexist. Some high routers, called “dual stack” routers can support both IPv4 and IPv6.

We are in for a long slow trudge as this transition develops. However, with the broad acceptance of tablets and smart phones coupled with the ubiquitous rollout of LTE networks, what looks like a slow trudge now could turn into a brisk run very soon.

Now that you know about the network address changes, be sure not to overlook your network support infrastructure in your planning. What about your probes that analyze packets and provide critical information about what is going on in your network? What about your network protection appliances such as IPS/IDS and DLP? What about your CEM appliances? All these tools are invaluable to your network operation. What about the TAPS that are used to connect these tools to your network, aggregate and filter link data before passing it to the appliances? Will your TAPs and other access switches pass IPv6? Can they aggregate and filter on IPv6?

Be sure to understand how all the equipment that touches your IPv4 packets will transition to the new world of IPv6. Smart phones quickly changed the way my daughter communicates with her friends. They will also be responsible for many important changes in your network design. It seems far in the future but as a prominent CEO once said, “Technology is measured in dog years.”

Learn how Network Critical’s TAP technology can help you plan for the future. Visit www.networkcritical.com for more information.

Stair-step vs. Straight-line Scaling

By: Daniel O’Donnell

I have never climbed Mt. Everest, but if I did, I certainly would not want to throw out all my climbing gear and buy new equipment each time I reach the next camp. Leaving base camp and trekking through each plateau to the summit, starting each new day with all new equipment. Does it sound outlandish? Many network operators manage their growth like a very expensive mountain climb.

Growth is inevitable and not always predictable. Planning for growth, therefore, is not an exact science. When climbing, you never know what the weather will be like tomorrow. When planning for network growth, you never know when your company will acquire another company, add a new office or establish an e-commerce division. Network architects grapple with the unknown all the time. There are designs that mitigate the risks of unknown growth variables; one is called straight-line scaling.

Many network equipment vendors make products for specific market sizes such as small business, enterprise, service provider and so on. The trick for the network architect is to look into the crystal ball and order the product that best fits their needs for the moment without overspending on the next larger version which they may never fully utilize. There can be price advantages if the network requirements exactly meet the maximum capacity of the product ordered. This is the manufacturer’s optimum design for cost and, therefore, price to the user. The problem with this practice is this…What happens when one more port is needed? What happens when a 1 Gigabit link becomes a 10 Gigabit link? What happens when one more GHz of processing is required?

A different approach to architecture can provide “future insurance” and mitigate the need to replace an entire system when growth happens to take the network beyond the scale of the installed equipment. That approach is straight-line scaling. This is where the manufacturer designs a low cost base line platform that can provide cross-market scalability. Generally, a modular architecture is used for these platforms. The network operator will purchase a base chassis, node or platform. Growth and change will be implemented in small increments and traverse the traditional market limitations of single purpose systems.

Once the initial platform is installed, growing the system is incrementally less expensive because the base platform does not need to be replaced. Further, the modular growth is designed to accommodate small steps up the scale. When looking at equipment or hardware, ask about the maximum capacity of the platform under consideration. If it is close to your current requirement, there is a good chance the price will be attractive. The probability is also high that a complete system replacement will be required before this investment is off your books. A modular platform with broader incremental scaling will offer a competitive price right now and allow for planned and unplanned growth without fork-lifting the entire system prematurely.

You do not need to climb Mt. Everest in one day. Neither do you need to buy all new gear every time you reach the next camp. Buy gear that will take you all the way to the top step by step. Just keep on trekking up the mountain and ask your Sherpa for what you need when you need it.

For more on Network Critical products, please visit networkcritical.com

Why Invest in a Product that is Built Around a Modular Design?

By: George Bouchard

Why is Modularity important when considering purchasing a network access product? Well, for example, it may not be practical to design a house in a modular fashion, but if it were practical, then you could build your house exactly the way you wanted it for your needs today.  And if you only had the need for two bedrooms today, you could design it that way.  As your family grew, you could then add more bedroom modules to accommodate the growth of your family or your mother-in-law coming to live with you.

Modularity gives you flexibility…you only have to purchase what you need today and you can add or change functionality as your needs expand.

So, when considering equipment to provide Network Access for the tools you need to keep your network safe, secure, and in compliance; it would be wise to consider Network Critical’s SmartNA System.

The SmartNA System will give you the flexibility you need to solve your network access problems today and is so flexible it can be changed to meet your needs of tomorrow.

When it comes to networks, you can guarantee one thing — the network will GROW.

It always does. Even in the smallest of networks, like the one you have in your home, will grow and change.  You will need to add tools and access more links.

So, if you want to stay linked into your diagnostic tools without having to start over every year or two, then a modular network access system is what you need to invest in.

Check out the Network Critical SmartNA Data Access System.  You’ll be able to get the modules you need today and be comfortable with the fact that you can add or exchange modules to meet your needs for tomorrow.

For more information about Network Critical’s SmartNA System, click here.