DataVox: 24X7 Network Monitoring

Aimed at a wide swath of customers ranging from SOHOs to enterprise clients, DataVox's DNA NetSensor provides remote fault monitoring and performance optimization, said Norbert Sluzewski, president of DataVox, New York.

"It's a complete enterprise-level remote network management solution for clients who don't have network management software installed or who do but choose not to use it because of the considerable oversight, management and personnel required to run it," Sluzewski said.

DataVox uses a secure VPN connection to link the network operations center housed within its New York data center to clients' infrastructure. Using a pre-determined, customized notification system, the service provides alerts to customers if there are equipment failures. Customers also have Web-based access to monitor network status, he said. "It requires no equipment to be placed at the customer's site," he said.

The service also tracks historical performance and utilization data, which helps clients with capacity planning, Sluzewski said. "We can forecast that [equipment has to be upgraded or that they need to add another server," he said.

In addition, DataVox can monitor the physical environment where a customer's infrastructure is housed for things such as the temperature of the data center or the opening of a door at 3 a.m. on a Saturday. There's also an option to add video monitoring, Sluzewski said.

For one DataVox client, the decision to migrate from an implementation of Hewlett-Packard's OpenView network management software to the NetSensor service was more a matter of customer satisfaction rather than cost savings, said Tim Mallon, director of IT at NatSource, an over-the-counter energy broker in New York.

"Support from HP was horrendous. Anytime we had questions it was brutal getting anyone on the phone," said Mallon, noting that he and his staff would often wait on hold for two hours to get customer support. It's a problem Mallon said he has not faced with DataVox. "We liked the fact that they're not that big of a company. There aren't a whole lot of hops to the top if there's a problem," Mallon said.

NatSource pays DataVox about $600 to $700 per month to manage its network, which spans four locations and includes 12 servers, about five routers, a variety of switches and several firewalls, Mallon said.

DataVox offers four versions of DNA NetSensor. The low-end offering for SOHO clients with up to 10 nodes is priced at about $500 per month. An offering for SMB clients with about 25 employees and two to five servers is about $1,500 per month. A corporate edition that includes additional security features is about $2,500 per month. The high-end enterprise version for customers with more than 100 nodes and multiple offices is about $5,000 per month.