Managed Networks Feature
June 11, 2010
Spacenet's Douglas Discusses Business Continuity Communications
By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor
Recently TMC's (News - Alert) CEO Rich Tehrani had a chance to sit down and interview Spacenet's Jon Douglas. Calling Spacenet 'one of the real founding companies in the satellite industry,' Douglas noted that they've been around for about thirty years. The company is primarily focused on VSAT satellite in the North American market.
You can tell they were one of the first ones in the market, they snagged one of the coolest names. Have to be there first to get those.
They're recently expanded their offerings to include a number of managed network services, he said, incorporating various terrestrial connectivity methods, and a premise-based hardware platform called the Prysm Pro, 'all incorporated into single point with our VSAT satellite connectivity.'
Prysm Pro itself 'will allow you to deploy and manage virtually any kind of application,' Douglas explained. It will take different input methods, so 'you can have DSL at one location, VSAT in another, and it will let you manage all these from a single network, monitor your networks, monitor the application, and it's even got a continuity platform,' he said, so if it sees a problem with your terrestrial line, 'it'll swap you over to a satellite connection automatically.'
It's really a business continuity enabler, Douglas said. 'It really focuses on and delivers the core promise of managed network services, in that it lets you focus on your strategic core initiatives and leave the driving to us, when it comes to the basic core connectivity and availability of your network.'
And for their government business, Douglas said, the big thing they're seeing now is 'emergency response of business continuity.' He noted that they also recently did a big platform with the Red Cross, working with an number of systems associated with the relief effort in Haiti, and as a result of that work 'we're seeing a lot more interest in a quick-deploy, continuity network that can be maintained regardless of disaster.'
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David's articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.
Edited by Michael Dinan
