* Why SilverBack's SilverStreak could be right for your environment
From time to time, it’s a good idea to look at technologies that may not be available to enterprise IT today, but could be soon. One such technology is currently focused at resellers, service providers and system integrators but it could be easily adapted to enterprise needs. The technology can be adopted to manage remote branch offices and comes from SilverBack Technologies.
SilverBack’s mix of fault and performance, resource and asset, and security capabilities is complemented by a policy-based provisioning capability (which I wrote about a year ago) that could be a boon for remote branch office management.
Since SilverBack’s core market is service providers targeting small-and-midsize businesses, it has learned to scale process and complexity downward to meet the economics of that marketplace. It has also enabled SilverBack to focus its attention on all the “eases” – ease of deployment, administration and use, which the broader enterprise IT management marketplace has still to address.
The SilverStreak Management Tunnel is a case in point. It provides access between a central management provider and their remote managed locations based on three objectives: scalability, cost effectiveness and security. SilverStreak requires a modest, client-side software footprint for remote polling and data collection. All communications with the host management system are initiated from the client and then transmitted via SSL encryption. The software clients (needed on a per site, not a per device basis) can enable outbound HTTPS (port 443) traffic. Central management can terminate sessions once they have taken care of an alert or problem and free up the tunnel for other use.
This enables easy set up and secure transmissions driven on an as-needed basis from client-side monitoring software. In its current release, SilverStreak does require some manual intervention from the central management provider to acknowledge and administrate those next-step sessions to actually remediate problems on a remote device. But even this fairly minimal requirement should be addressed in future releases.
The SilverStreak model is reflective of a “clear and present” requirement to enable remote management to large numbers of locations in a scalable manner. It should become a “building block to watch” as not just service providers, but enterprise IT with vast numbers of remote branch offices, as well as many retail operations, need more cost-effective and facile adjustments to standard management practices.
