AVTECH Software specializes in hardware and software to monitor computer room and data center environments. The company's Room Alert and TemPageR hardware monitor computer room or data center conditions such as temperature, humidity, power, flood/water, smoke/fire, airflow, room entry, and more. PageR Enterprise software monitors any OS server, device, or event network-wide.
When issues or events occur, AVTECH (888.220.6700; www.AVTECH.com) products use today's most advanced alerting technologies to quickly communicate important status information to managers via a number of methods, including computer, mobile phone, pager, or PDA. In addition, products can perform automatic corrective actions to quickly resolve issues.
Michael Sigourney is AVTECH's senior product specialist. As such, he's involved in product design and worldwide distribution, sales, and marketing and serves as an industry evangelist for IT and facilities environment monitoring technologies.
What are the biggest IT-related issues facing today's small to midsized enterprise?
Sigourney: Attacks from unseen environment issues continue to plague computer rooms of all sizes, with temperature-related problems remaining the No. 1 cause of IT downtime. For SMEs, this is especially true because their data center is typically in a facility that was never designed for that purpose. This creates a significant risk from basic environment concerns such as temperature, power, humidity, flood, or smoke. Since most organizations cannot make many of the necessary facility changes, it is vital that they understand where they are vulnerable and monitor for any changes in temperature, power, humidity, flooding, smoke, airflow, and more.
Managers call us every day facing a crisis related to one of these conditions. The end result can be devastating to expensive IT equipment and the operation of a business. With smaller rooms, a slight change in the environment can overwhelm the room in less than 10 minutes. For example, if an air conditioner fails, most computer rooms will rise from the standard 68 degrees Fahrenheit to more than 85 degrees in 8.5 minutes. That's a problem because IT equipment should not be run when room temperatures exceed 85 degrees. And yet, we all do it because shutting down systems is extremely undesirable.
Research shows the average data center experiences environment-related downtime one to three times a year, and managers almost always say the problem struck without warning. The reality is that warning signs are available. Automated monitoring solutions are readily available, easy to use, and extremely cost-effective. Market-leading solutions are available for less than $1,200 with all the advanced bells and whistles; specialized solutions such as temperature monitoring are available for less than $300.
To operate without IT environment monitoring in place simply doesn't make sense. You need to protect your IT equipment and organization by implementing an automated solution for environment monitoring, alerting, and automatic corrective action (e.g., server shutdown). You'll likely cost-justify it the first time it alerts you about a pending threat.
What should Processor readers know about your company's products?
Sigourney: AVTECH is the leading worldwide manufacturer of IT and facilities environment monitoring products. We design, build, manufacture, sell, and support our products. Since 1998, more than 86% of all customers who have purchased Room Alert hardware continue to use it and have continued to annually renew their optional maintenance service.
AVTECH continues to expand to meet customer demand worldwide. Our Room Alert products are used in more than 30,000 organizations spanning 104 countries. Room Alert's popularity is based on its ease of use, reliability, advanced software capabilities, and high value. Value is benefit divided by price, and most managers believe Room Alert has the highest value of any similar product.
What makes your company unique?
Sigourney: AVTECH is large enough to be a design and manufacturing innovator while still small enough to remember that service and reliability are what customers desire. Real people answer our phones within two rings. We manufacture most of our products in the United States and, if there is a problem, we can have an engineer on the manufacturing floor within 90 minutes. Orders received by 3 p.m. ship the same day, and AVTECH products come with four to six firmware updates annually, unlimited technical support, and a 100% hardware replacement guarantee.
AVTECH Software, Inc.