SMBs have similar requirements to large enterprises, desiring the combined benefits of increased efficiency and enhanced competitiveness that result form interconnecting sites, deploying collaborative and productivity-enhancing applications, increasing access to data inside and outside the office (teleworkers), and integrating data and voice (VoIP).
Unlike large enterprises, SMBs typically don’t have the necessary IT resources or budget to procure and manage advanced networking technologies. Instead, they are turning to service providers to deliver these technologies to them as services either hosted or provided via on-site CPE. While some of these technologies work well as hosted services, to provide a holistic converged networking solution requires a fully integrated onsite device to provide the security, availability and flexibility that hosted services lack, while giving the customer peace-of-mind that their network will not disappear if their broadband connection fails.
Installed at the customer premises, edgeBOX delivers high-speed Internet access and enables a wealth of managed services out of a single solution including: firewalls, VPNs, VoIP, locally hosted email, automatic backup and Quality of Service (QoS) along with high availability. By offering these services, the service provider adds value, increases per-subscriber revenue, improves customer retention, and positions itself to provide turnkey solutions, including both equipment and services.
To compliment edgeBOX, iTEMS has been developed to make large scale deployment and management of edgeBOX units easier. iTEMS allows multiple edgeBOX units to be configured simultaneously, provides proactive ongoing management through monitoring of alerts, has inventory control, automation through scripting and a number of other features to enable rapid deployment and effective long term support of managed services.
