On the Mark: Automate best practices
January 07, 2008 (Computerworld) -- When your IT vendor’s product goes kablooey in your data center, you contact the company’s support team and with a calm, Hannibal Lecter-like voice, you threaten to cook them with fava beans if they don’t fix your problem immediately. Sometimes that works. But, asks Gil Levonai, vice president of marketing and strategy at NextNine Ltd. in Tel Aviv, wouldn’t it be better if the vendor had tools in place that could automatically fix problems before you went cannibalistic? That’s what he claims NextNine’s Virtual Support Engineer (VSE) can do. He says the VSE software — part of the NextNine Service Automation 4 offering — can be downloaded or installed at your site. It uses a variety of protocols to access files, run commands and queries, and scan logs. It can actively fix, patch and update systems. “The VSE does what a support engineer would do in a help situation,” Levonai says. By the end of 2008, NextNine will allow channel partners, and not just the vendor itself, to provide scripts. NextNine sells its wares directly to vendors as a reseller, so you’ll need to pressure your IT suppliers to include VSE in their offerings. Do your best Hannibal Lecter imitation when you call. Convergence Coming Fixed/mobile convergence seems inevitable. A Google search on the term delivers more than 670,000 hits. FMC technology was prominently featured in Computerworld.com’s recent story “13 Future Mobile Technologies That Will Change Your Life.” And New York-based market research firm Heavy Reading says 60% of telecommunications providers expect most businesses to have shifted to FMC by 2012. But even inevitability has its challenges, suggests Kim Ganote, director of product development at Sprint Nextel Corp. She says you need an IP-based technology that can handle multiple media, because mobile devices will increasingly transmit video as well as voice and data. Ganote claims that the Sprint Wireless Integration service is media-agnostic. It also benefits mobile users by giving mobile handsets a raft of PBX-controlled features, such as integrated voice mail, call forwarding, abbreviated dialing and a command set that mimics a desk phone. Still, Ganote says that IT departments may have to work with their PBX suppliers to transfer desk phones’ soft-key functions to mobile units, and there could be interface pitfalls because of differences in keypads from device to device. Certainly, the road to FMC will not be without a pothole or two. Ribbiting Conversations Ted Griggs, CEO of Ribbit Corp. in Mountain View, Calif., calls his start-up “Silicon Valley’s first phone company.” He claims that Ribbit Smart Switch software, which Alcatel- Lucent has certified for use in its networks, can connect to telephone networks and work with advanced protocols like SIP. The product also handles operations such as billing. And, like carrier switches, it runs around the clock. So, what makes this a Silicon Valley technology? Griggs answers: “We ripped open the walled garden a carrier would put before the switch.” That is, the Ribbit Smart Switch has open application programming interfaces so developers can, for example, integrate a phone dialer into a CRM package, combining call records with other customer data automatically. Ribbit officially launched last month; Ribbit for Salesforce will ship next month. Monthly pricing runs about $25 per seat. More Buzz Discover and discuss more industry action at the On the Mark blog: computerworld.com/blogs/hall.