National Instruments Selects Opengear for Out-of-Band Remote Infrastructure Management

National Instruments to Deploy Opengear ACM5004-G in 20 Global Offices


SANDY, UT--(Marketwire - Jul 10, 2012) - Opengear (www.opengear.com), a leading provider of next generation console server and remote management solutions, today announced that National Instruments, a creator of award-winning, innovative products that simplify the jobs of engineers and scientists worldwide, has selected an Opengear solution to remotely manage its network infrastructure. Remote infrastructure management provides an out-of-band, independent, resilient access path to troubleshoot remote networks during infrastructure outages, ensuring uptime and business continuity for enterprise networks and data centers.

The National Instruments (NI) global network connects 50 offices worldwide and is deployed with Cisco, Juniper, and Citrix networking equipment. National Instruments will use the Opengear ACM5004-G Cellular Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) gateway to connect to Cisco 2800, 2900, and 3900 Integrated Services Routers, as well as the Catalyst 3750 switch, the Cisco Wide-Area Virtualization Engine (WAE) 574, and Juniper EX Series switches and stacks. With the Opengear ACM5004-G, NI can insure uptime by accessing the network via cellular connections, even if the remote office is continents away from headquarters, freeing IT staff resources. 

National Instruments has embarked on the IT project by outfitting 20 offices with the Opengear solution, and the deployment has already demonstrated proven ROI. According to Craig Langerman, network engineer at National Instruments, "One of our California offices already had the Opengear device in place, and when we implemented a WAN optimization solution on the network, it caused fragmented connectivity to our main office. We were able to remotely connect to the Opengear device and troubleshoot remote to diagnose the issue, without having to send someone from our office in Austin to California."

The Opengear equipment is a new install in most of National Instrument's offices, but National will be replacing or augmenting Avocent equipment with Opengear in its main home office. Opengear met NI's high security standards by providing SSH and SSL connectivity, and offers an embedded Nagios feature for integrated management. Nagios provides centralized monitoring of all the computers, software and network services in complex and geographically dispersed data centers.

"The product covers all the bases for out-of-band access, with room for expandability, which is ideal," continued Langerman. "It offers a broad feature set, and ensures always-on network connectivity for National Instruments, while allowing our IT resources to be used for higher-level IT initiatives instead of onsite remote office support." 

Going forward, National Instruments plans to install Opengear's larger IM4200 infrastructure management appliances, with plans for redundancy at its Costa Rica location, and evaluation at other worldwide offices.

"Opengear understands how important a reliable network infrastructure management device is for business continuity," said Vice President of North American Sales at Opengear, Todd Rychecky. "National Instruments leverages our support for both GSM and CDMA cellular technologies, enabling them to access and remediate a problematic network device anywhere in the world, with no disruption to their business."

For more information on the National Instruments' case study, click here: http://opengear.com/docs/Network_Instruments_Case_Study.pdf

About Opengear
Opengear (http://www.opengear.com) develops smart solutions for critical network infrastructure management. Opengear's Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) appliances secure and simplify remote monitoring, access and control of critical IT, network, operations technology and industrial control systems. Opengear's smart appliances integrate next-generation automation and true out-of-band management technologies, ensuring that customers maintain complete control over critical infrastructure -- wherever, whenever.