Daily Network Monitor

As Americans, we rarely live without the goods and services we desire. For years, we have heard experts like Alan Greenspan warn that when countries outside of the United States see rapid growing living standards; their currencies will appreciate against ours in parallel. For those of you who are Warren Buffet fans, he was right again. In 2002, Buffet began to purchase foreign currencies, betting on their appreciation versus the dollar. Even a wealthy country like the United States will eventually run out of steam after its citizens spend excessive dollars on foreign produced goods.

Further, once countries like China acquire dollars though the $700 billion US trade deficit, they will begin to dump the dollars once they suspect its valuation is in jeopardy. A country like China, which holds over $1 trillion dollars, has great power in the interconnected global economy, if it begins dumping dollars in favor of Euros thus pushing the dollar to lower levels.

For lots of software companies, the weakening dollar and weakening economy will lead to headaches in meeting growth and profitability objectives. Ironically, these companies tend to be US market centric with a bias or mis-understanding of what being a global company means. In contrast, international software companies find unseen benefits in dark clouds and the current economic status is a perfect example. Global markets offer growth, risk mitigation and excitement but you need to choose wisely. For example, it is unlikely a market like Australia with a population of 20 million people will balance a slowed US economy entirely but it is probable that a select list markets will offer opportunity to supplement the decline in US markets.

Further, being global does not mean you need local representation in every country though that decision is highly dependent on product characteristics like price, complexity and training to name a few. For those that build easy to use products like WhatsUp Gold, the internet and the ecommerce business process offer great opportunity for revenue and profitability enhancements.

If you think we’ve been quiet lately, that’s only because we’ve been busy. Today Ipswitch launches WhatsUp Gold Distributed, the long-awaited multi-site version of WhatsUp Gold Premium v11. Like the site says,

Built upon the award-winning WhatsUp Gold engine, Ipswitch’s new WhatsUp Gold Distributed Edition provides organizations of all sizes with a flexible solution that enables them to reliably manage complex, disparate client network environments. There is no limit to how many remote networks can be connected, and despite its comprehensive functionality, WhatsUp Gold Distributed Edition is easy to implement and use – it actually frees up the network administrator to devote more time to other strategic priorities.

Obviously, we’re really excited about it, and we think any IT manager who has to deal with networks across long distances will be too.