Colowatch Unveils Management Services

Colowatch Inc. on Monday launches its suite of proactive management services designed to monitor customer IT infrastructures and enter those systems, when necessary, through a private virtual tunnel.

Colowatch CEO Jerry Lin describes his company's management services suite as a "wall" and a virtual private network as a "locked door". The company's service is triggered by errors in content, connectivity, or security that a customer's system generates. "We're not able to initiate a session with the client unless an event is triggered," Lin says. "A VPN becomes a security liability because you're giving people permanent access to your systems."

If an error occurs, Colowatch creates a tunnel, or connection, between the customer's system and Colowatch's network operating center through which it can correct the problem. Colowatch's service is proactive in that the company's network operating center monitors 15 different Internet access points, including AOL, AT&T, Digex, MCI, and Sprint.

ETrango Inc., a Fremont, Calif., provider of Web-based supply-chain software, relies on Colowatch to monitor its servers at a Verio Inc. hosting facility. "We're a small, fast-moving company, so our objective is to work on developing our application," says eTrango CEO Waqas Kahn. "Managed services are a different animal from application development."

Kahn says he chose Colowatch over other managed service providers because Colowatch can link into eTrango's systems from multiple locations. For eTrango, the key to success is making sure that its customers--typically on the sell-side of the supply chain--can collaborate with their buyers, typically manufacturers, using eTrango's Web-based Intelligent Transaction Manager application.

Pricing for Colowatch's ColoScan and ColoProtect services ranges from $250 to $1,000 per month. ColoScan is software placed at multiple Internet access points to enable simultaneous monitoring of any network from each site. ColoProtect is a network appliance designed to secure firewall tunneling with 128-bit encryption.