A Single Solution for Technology Convergence

Data with voice. And video
SNMP with non-SNMP
Wireless with wireline
Satellite with terrestrial

Talk about a word full of implications, convergence is it, Most broadly, it is bringing heterogeneous technologies together in the same network, like PBX boxes with SNMP data networks. It’s more than that as well. It’s integrating highly-specialized devices  for cryptography, healthcare or engineering which act a little differently from other boxes.

And the most challenging part is that all of individual "axes of convergence" are converging on each other at the same time, Today's challenge for your team may be wireless applications to support sales, but very soon they'll also want video over wireless. Trying to manage the problem one axis at a time is going to be time consuming, expensive and ultimately, will still leave you without a stable, integrated platform for your net-centered applications.

With its breakthrough abstraction technology, however, NeuralStar provides the only complete convergence solution for all technologies, devices and protocols. NeuralStar is not just a management application, it provides a stable, economical platform for all of your networking decisions, today and tomorrow.

Not only does NeuralStar manage any kind of physical device (as well as its virtual elements, such as  routing or switching fabrics, VPN assignments, logical ports and QoS contracts) its Abstraction Engine supports two-way communication with network-connected applications, databases, services, processes and infrastructure for total control of your network. Here are just a few of the management connections made by neuralstar users.

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NeuralStar's Network Navigator displays NeuralStar’s power for tackling convergence. The Navigator is a window into all of your network resources, putting operators just clicks away from any network element or management tool. Beneath the Navigator’s window is groundbreaking abstraction technology that will change the way you view the management of convergent systems.

At Last, an Economical Enterprise Architecture

NeuralStar uses “drivers” to communicate with connected elements. Since normalization of heterogeneous “languages” occurs in NeuralStar’s Abstraction Engine, these drivers have a much simpler job to do than the “probes” or “adapters” used by other products. In fact, they are called drivers because they are so similar in their simplicity to printer drivers. That’s one reason we provide drivers at no charge. That’s right, NeuralStar comes with a wealth of free drivers and with NeuralStar Designer®, NeuralStar’s easy-to-use development environment, any network engineer can quickly create a NeuralStar driver or modify one on the fly.

Other products, especially those capable of monitoring both SNMP and non-SNMP networks, have to charge dearly for their data collectors, more depending upon how many elements are connected to your network. Why the difference? Except for NeuralStar, other network management products were built to work in homogenous environments. Even the few that claim otherwise actually were created by sewing together multiple homogenous solutions (most obtained through corporate acquisitions). They give the illusion of supporting heterogeneous technologies but, in reality, the data model that holds the systems together is so complex and convoluted that it is a major project for those companies to update them at all. Providing the ability for you to create or customize your own drivers is simply out of the question. That means, in addition to dramatically higher costs, their customers must wait for new releases and often get charged for making configuration changes. That’s not control over your network, it’s ceding decision-making to a vendor.

Drivers are just one reason why NeuralStar is the most economical enterprise-grade solution available. NeuralStar eliminates the cost of supporting multiple interfaces, redundant tools and duplicate management infrastructures, and its software-based, agentless data collection eliminates extraneous hardware or and the need to deploy agents on every device. In addition, since NeuralStar is built on Microsoft’s COTS technology, it dramatically reduces training, maintenance and management costs.

Of course, the ultimate advantage is that since NeuralStar integrates all technologies, it is continuously adaptable and extendible to meet future requirements and receptive to new solutions as your network evolves. Decision-making from integrating routers from a different hardware vendor to protecting legacy technologies are completely in your hands.

NeuralStar features supporting technology convergence include:

• Resolves converged network management challenges all in a single product, including data-voice-video, wireless-wireline, satellite-ground and more. Provides integrated management for all types and manufacturers of routers, switches, servers, MUXes, voice infrastructure and satellite/optical transport.
  
• Provides integrated management for all network-connected processes, applications, databases, services, servers, virus detection systems and desktops.
  
• Dedicated Abstraction Engine separates the data collection process from the normalization of heterogeneous device and event data.
  
• Manages specialized devices, such as healthcare, laboratory, cryptographic and field engineering equipment.
  
• Extensive management protocol support includes TCP/IP, SSH, UDP, X.25 (both switched and permanent virtual circuits), SNMP (including v1, v2c and v3 with cryptography), Telnet and ASCII (TL-1, Asynchronous Serial or any ASCII stream).
  
• Out of the box latency and availability measurement for infrastructure services including DNS, SMTP, POP3, HTTP/S, NTP and TP.
  
• XML support is inherent in all internal NeuralStar communications.
  
• External interface integration supports SOAP and web services using SOA for integration across platforms.
  
• Show consolidated views of multiple networks, including integrated operational views of shared network hardware, services (email and Web servers) and network-centered technologies, such as VoIP or IM.

Learn More About NeuralStar:
Technology | Convergence | Visibility | Products | Tiering | Control