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CenterBeam Announces Immediate Availability of Server and Network Management Services

Posted on: Tuesday, 11 November 2003, 06:00 CST

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, CenterBeam announced it is offering two new standalone services, server management and network management, that CenterBeam includes in its complete IT infrastructure service.

"CenterBeam earns very high levels of customer satisfaction for its comprehensive IT infrastructure service," said Kevin Francis, CenterBeam chief executive officer and president, "And as our reputation grows, more and more prospective customers are asking for CenterBeam's caliber of service applied to their very specific IT problems -- such as server management and network management. Today, CenterBeam is taking action to satisfy that growing demand."

CenterBeam's Standalone Services

Earlier this year, CenterBeam began to offer hosted Microsoft Exchange as a standalone service and has won several new customers for that offering. With today's announcement, CenterBeam is now offering two new standalone services -- server management and network management. "These are new services only in the sense that CenterBeam has never offered them unbundled from our comprehensive service," said Francis. "Every day, since our founding four years ago, CenterBeam has managed servers and networks for our customers to help them focus on their business while we manage the business of running their IT infrastructure." Pricing for CenterBeam's server management is $199 per month per server and network management is $60 per month per network device.

CenterBeam's Server Management: Constant Vigilance for Critical Services

CenterBeam's team of engineers constantly monitors customer servers and manages these critical tasks:

Anti-Virus Management: CenterBeam installs best-in-class anti-virus software and maintains it with the latest virus definitions, pushing out immediate updates for critical threats when they are released.

Patch Management: Patches for operating systems and applications are tested on customer server images that CenterBeam maintains in its Q&A lab. When patches are certified as safe, CenterBeam uses its software agents to push out the patches, seamlessly and transparently, to customers' servers.

Software Distribution: For operating system and application upgrades, or when customers want to distribute new software applications, CenterBeam will bundle and package the software, test them on customer images and then electronically distribute the package.

Asset Tracking: CenterBeam delivers ongoing reports on the computing assets in their IT infrastructure including: make and model of equipment, serial number, processor speed, amount of memory, total and free disk space, and operating system and service pack level. This level of detail gives an organization everything they need to know to efficiently manage the components of their IT infrastructure and plan for future upgrades and changes.

Microsoft Active Directory Security Management: CenterBeam manages customer directories to ensure they accurately map to customer-defined groups, access controls and permission structures. This creates a secure information infrastructure within an organization.

Fault Management: Every five minutes, 24 hours a day, 2,016 times per week, CenterBeam scans every server attached to the network, monitoring them for faults and warnings that precede a fault. If a fault or warning is detected, CenterBeam manages the issue to resolution, serving as the single- point of contact for hardware maintenance vendor and the customer. This service element helps ensure maximum system availability.

Performance Management: As part of its constant server scans, CenterBeam monitors CPU and memory utilization as well as several other performance metrics. If a threshold is crossed, CenterBeam determines if there's a problem with the server, application or if there's a need to reconfigure the hardware and how it's being used.

Reporting: On an ongoing basis, CenterBeam reports on current server up/down status over the previous 30 days. Included in the report are historical virus updates and number of times thresholds have been reached.

CenterBeam's Network Management: Monitoring and Managing Every Connection

Mirroring CenterBeam's Server Management service, the company's team of engineers constantly monitors every connection in its customers' network and manages these critical yet routine tasks:

Fault Management: As with the company's Server Management Service, CenterBeam staff scans customer networks every five minutes, 24 hours a day, to check on every network connection and repair faults when they're found.

Performance Management: CenterBeam's engineers monitor threshold levels of bandwidth usage and device performance and make adjustments as necessary.

Configuration Management: CenterBeam's network engineers actively adjusts device configurations to ensure optimum load balancing in customer networks.

High Customer Satisfaction Leading to Growing Demand

Four years ago, CenterBeam designed a comprehensive IT infrastructure service encompassing personal computer, network and server hardware and software. This approach is essential to CenterBeam being able to design out failure points and manage every aspect of the end-user experience and earn unprecedented levels of customer satisfaction. For the calendar year to date, CenterBeam's customer satisfaction rating is at 95% according to Quality Research Associates. This high level of service and customer satisfaction is drawing the attention of important opinion-makers, such as Gartner, which recently published a case study on the CenterBeam service at InfoWorld, a leading computer-trade magazine. In addition, CenterBeam's expertise in computer security has also recently been profiled on CNBC and in The Wall Street Journal.

CenterBeam: Lowering Costs, Increasing Focus, Total Satisfaction Guarantee

CenterBeam offers a unique IT management service for mid-sized businesses. CenterBeam's clients benefit from an IT infrastructure that is more sophisticated, secure and robust than they could build and manage themselves. CenterBeam customers are more productive because the CenterBeam service is much more reliable than the industry average. IT organizations using the CenterBeam service are able to focus staff onto business opportunities rather than time-consuming, routine IT services. All CenterBeam services are backed with a Total Satisfaction Guarantee, a fully flexible month-to-month agreement.

About CenterBeam, Inc.

CenterBeam manages end-user information technology for organizations interested in saving costs, raising productivity and increasing corporate agility. Founded in 1999, CenterBeam has strategic, financial and technical backing from industry leaders Microsoft, Intel, Dell and EDS. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California and can be reached at 408.750.0500 or http://www.centerbeam.com/.

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