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Complete Diagnostics Within!

Riddle me this…

1.) What quality network connections do you have?
2.) Are you paying for more service than you need?
3.) What condition is your current system in?
4.) How do you troubleshoot problems?
5.) Who is accessing your system?

…the answers we hear most often are that of uncertainty or faint notions of seemingly good or bad, with nothing really to point at. The truth is, that your telecommunications and network services should not be a mystery. No matter if you are making a business decision which affects recurring expenses, or determining why it is your services are faltering… you need to have the information available in order to make a wise and informed course of action.

The Spydur provides the most information possible, across all aspects of your telecommunications and networking services

1.) What quality network connections do you have?

The Spydur continuously measures the network latency with an unlimited number of hosts, whether internal or external to your network, and charts the results on a timeline basis. Not only will you see the latency across these hosts, but also the deviation or jitter from it. You will further be able to determine if a problem resides with a specific host, or with your provider, as the results overlay on combined graphs.

2.) Are you paying for more service than you need?

The Spydur continuously measures the amount of throughput you are actually using from an unlimited number of access points, whether at your own site or a remote office, and charts the results on a timeline basis. Not only will you see what you are using, but if your provider(s) are delivering what is being promised. Many times, we see customers paying for significantly more service than what is actually needed, and this can immediately be turned around into monthly savings!

3.) What condition is your current system in?

The Spydur continuously measures the system’s health across all metrics, and charts the results on a timeline basis (e.g. utilization, activity, temperature, voltages, etc.). This includes all components at the hardware level, and all services at the software level. This helps to identify any discrepancies, and provides a course of action for failing hardware or environmental conditions.

4.) How do you troubleshoot problems?

These charted timelines are an extraordinary and valuable resource, but sometimes you may want to manually run any number of tests to further pinpoint or confirm issues. You may also need to process and view special, real-time debug information from a variety of other devices (e.g. routers, switches, telephones, etc.). The Spydur makes all of this possible, as you can easily perform these tests, and accept diagnostic information for other devices on your network too!

5.) Who is accessing your system?

Sometimes the hardest issues to pinpoint have nothing to do with your network or the system itself (hardware/software), but rather users trying to do something they are “not supposed to do.” The Spydur logs absolutely everything on a timeline basis, and will help pinpoint oddities and errors as caused by users themselves.

The next time someone says:

“I had a problem yesterday at 3 o’clock, but we are good now… can you tell me what happened yesterday at 3 o’clock?”

…you will know exactly where to look, and what to say!!!

Screwing up a Board!

The Spydur comes as either a rackmount, tower, or wallmount… internally, whenever a wallmount order is placed, we refer to the build process as “screwing up a board”. The efforts to “screw up a board” goes well beyond any of our competition, because we want the physical installation to be significantly easier for you!

We have been offering “screwed up boards” (heh) since the very first SpydurCore & SpydurByte were introduced, and we’ve gotten pretty good at it. We continue to offer the wallmounted board at a loss (costing much more in time and materials) so that you don’t have to, because it not only makes your life easier but we know it can really help sell a system too!

Internally, whenever a wallmount order is placed, we refer to the build process as “screwing up a board”.

“Screwing up” a Spydur Wallmount takes a good bit of time, precise planning, and careful eyes to have it all come together just right. As every board is unique (different sites need different components), each comes with its own set of challenges.

Beginning the process, once we know what the customer wants, is to plan out where all the devices belong on the board. The devices maintain proper distances and are normally pointed toward the right of the board to ensure the cables have a natural flow. We make sure everything is mounted securely to prevent any damage, all cabling is color coded and stapled, and devices remain easily accessible with a single CAM screw locking them in.

A Spydur Wallmount is shipped with a variety of wood, steel, and masonry screws for different types of walls. All that should be required is to 1.) screw the board on your wall, 2.) connect a single power connection, and 3.) connect a single network connection along with any lines you may have coming in.

There are good reasons why people choose to get a wallmounted Spydur, and we want to help make your install as easy as possible. I hope this will give you a good overview of what it means to “screw up” a board, and can appreciate the effort behind the build. Thank you for reading through and have a great day!

Phenomenal Cosmic Power, Ity Bity Living Space!

Want to use those Cisco telephones? No problem! … the sales guys really like comparing the bottom line to show the substantial cost savings without any exorbitant maintenance contracts, because it makes them feel good by getting those potential customers to say wow! Those decision makers will now have the great difficulty of deciding where best to utilize that very big wad of cash (a very good problem indeed).

Similarly, us operations guys really like clearing out those IP Office’s and Call Managers, replacing an entire rack full of equipment with a single 1U chassis, because it makes us feel good by getting those new customers’ IT people to say wow! You can very easily see the realization come over their faces as they behold the new-found space, and watch as the multitude of devices are removed (no longer to be managed on their network).

I wish I had a dollar every time I heard…
“look, you can see the floor now!” – or – “wow, is that it?!?!?”

Hardware periodically leaps ahead in both capacity and performance, and allows for smaller form factors, lower electricity bills, lower temperatures, and significantly MORE performance! Over the years: motherboards have miniaturized, memory has gotten cheap, hard drives got larger (ridiculously large for telephony applications), and multi-core processors were introduced (a truly novel concept).

About a year ago, solid state drives were made standard in all SpydurCore’s & SpydurBytes, and while they continue to have the same great reliability as their mechanical counterparts, they operate at much lower temperatures, have no moving parts (can be bumped), and have significantly higher performance (which cannot be understated).

As for today, the standard processors used in the SpydurCore & SpydurByte are leaping ahead again with some very advanced and updated System-on-Chip (SoC) designs featuring quad cores at a 50% speed increase via 33% faster clock rate, with an even more advanced instruction set (i.e. out-of-order processing).

So… what to do with all that extra processing power? MWUHAAAAaaaaaaaa!

Once the purvue of only the powerful SpydurPBX, the lines are blurring as the feature set of the SpydurByte is expanding to now include: Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM) and Collaboration, integrated Web-MeetMe Management Controls, Three new Advanced Reporting Modules, Named Greeting Libraries, and several other enhancements along the way… all using the same ultra-small form factor! Partners will find an updated Product Matrix on the Partner Site, and be sure to ask a sales engineer for more information today!!!