By Erin Hayes

The World Cup is just three short weeks away. But before you prepare your wardrobe for the month of matches (get those jerseys laundered will you??) we suggest preparing your network for the event.

Now, you may be saying “Huh? What are you talking about; why should I be thinking about my network when I have my team to worry about?”

You should be thinking about your network because you are most definitely not the only one in your office who has their team on their mind.

According to a study by IDC Research, the average organization wastes between 30% and 40% of its network bandwidth to non-work related online activities. Just imagine the spike the in that percentage once the World Cup gets underway!

The 2010 World Cup is the first in the history of the tournament where every game will be streamed online live. You can bet video streaming sites such as YouTube, BBC iPlayer and other BitTorrent video sites will be used to their full potential during these games.

And while it’s nice that your co-workers will never have miss a game at work, you can bet your job will be made more hectic than ever, reacting to bandwidth chokes  from the extra usage – or even worse – complete outages.

Check out our Network Traffic Calculator to gain a better idea of your current bandwidth data – and then check out our Flow Monitor plug-in and start preventing bandwidth problems before they ruin your day!

Popularity: 37% [?]

By kmyers

In early March, Alessandro Porro, our International Sales Director, traveled throughout Asia to visit some of our WhatsUp Gold partners.  The first two stops of this tour were Japan and Korea, where Alessandro met with Vinetech.  Next, he visited our partner ZeroOne Technology in both China and Taiwan.  ZeroOne Technology, recently named “Distributor of the Year” in Taiwan, hosted a reseller event in both China and Taiwan.  Alessandro was able to share the product management strategy, roadmap, and provide details on our exciting upcoming releases with resellers in these regions. Finally, Alessandro wrapped up his travels in Hong Kong with a visit to Asiasoft.  Also while in Hong Kong, Alessandro met with representatives from AsiaVAD (from Singapore) to discuss current business.  We are so fortunate to have dedicated partners who are committed to making our APAC visit successful!

This trip was a great opportunity to visit our partners at their offices.  It is always exciting to visit with partners and hear from their customers; it helps achieve our mutual success. This was a great trip and we look forward to future visits!

Popularity: 33% [?]

By Erin Hayes

Twenty years and counting in business and WhatsUp Gold just keeps getting better!

We’re excited to announce our largest release in the history of Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold today – v14.2.

We couldn’t have done it without our customers – literally. You guys are responsible for the development and inclusion of four new major features:

-       Business hour reporting was the #1 requested feature

-       Blackout summary notifications was the #4 most requested feature

-       Errors and discards monitoring was the #6 most requested feature

-       PDF scheduled/email reports was the #9 most requested feature.

We are also releasing two new plug-ins:

-WhatsUp Gold WhatsVirtual – Now you can monitor and manage both physical and virtual VMWare environments from a single console!

-WhatsUp Gold Failover Manager – Keep your peace of mind that your WUG data will be safe with this secondary WUG Server in the case of a primary server failure.

In addition we’ve made many improvements to three of the four other plugins, WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor, WhatsUp Gold WhatsConnected and WhatsUp Gold WhatsConfigured.

But I’ll let you hear about it from the Guru. Don’t forget to check out our YouTube or Viddler channel for a complete set of tutorial videos for this release!

Popularity: 42% [?]

By Ennio Carboni

As President of Ipswitch Inc.’s Network Management division I have had the opportunity to speak with many of our customers about their experience using WhatsUp Gold.

Now, because WhatsUp Gold can be deployed and utilized in a variety of ways, each new story I hear varies from the last. But I have noticed a few common themes over the years. One such theme sounds like this:

“The phones stopped ringing as soon as it was deployed on the network.”

In fact, a few weeks ago I had a new customer call up our sales team and rave about the silence he and his team have enjoyed since they implemented WhatsUp Gold on their network. No more phone calls about the network being slow, that this server is down, that the Internet isn’t connecting, etc.

Because of the powerful systems and performance monitoring WhatsUp Gold delivers, these guys are finally the first to know when something is wrong on their network. They can now fix an issue before it affects their users.

This latest customer interaction reminded me of our history with job-search-giant, CareerBuilder. As a longtime user of WhatsUp Gold solutions, our product has literally grown along with CareerBuilder’s company.

In its early stages in 2003, at a point when the job search site was just one-fifth the size of the market leader, they brought in WhatsGold to solve their basic monitoring needs. As they’ve grown and matured, becoming the nation’s largest online job site, WhatsUp Gold has stayed a step ahead to continue to provide them the tool-set and functionality they need to manage a network that now includes close to 1300 devices.

Despite the evolution of technology and the increasing complexity of networks and managing solutions, we know that with most of our customers it is still the little things that make such a big difference. Mark Fouraker, Technologist at CareerBuilder, touches on just that in a favorite quote of mine from this customer story:

“My favorite story about WhatsUp Gold is when I was in an important meeting and was getting silent alerts on my pager about an impending issue on our network. I was sneaking out at breaks to troubleshoot and address the matter, eventually resolving it. The bottom line is that no one outside of a few people in operations had any idea there was even an issue at all. It’s just a beautiful product.”

A story like this is really powerful, in my opinion, because it shows how technology can evolve and customer needs can change, forcing us to continually adapt and innovate our product to meet those changing needs. It also shows that business relationships can certainly last as long as it remains mutually beneficial, with a bit of give and take from both sides.

Popularity: 51% [?]

By kmyers

Thanks to our partners we are able to reach a large and diverse number of international clients. This wouldn’t be possible without the exceptional help of our International Distributors of the Year for 2009:

Infinigate Deutschland in Europe, Middle East and Africa; ZeroOne Technology Taiwan in Asia Pacific; and LicenciasOnline in Latin America took charge in their respective regions and delivered impressive results.

The WhatsUp Gold Partner Program provides WUG ninjas such as these with resources, certifications, marketing opportunities, expertise, and training on the most up-to-date WUG products. Through collaboration like this, WhatsUp Gold stands to reach network managers in need of solutions in every corner of the world.

Want to learn how to become a WhatsUp Gold Partner? Visit our Partner Section.

Want to find a partner near you? Find one now!

Popularity: 38% [?]

By Erin Hayes

Is That Barbie in the Server Room?

It’s official folks. Being a geek is, without a doubt, chic. Even Barbie’s doing it!

Mattel announced last week that Barbie’s 125th career would be that of a computer engineer. Girl’s come a long way since her days as a secretary hasn’t she?

Barbie’s latest foray into the working world was determined by an online vote – Mattel’s first. A profession in high tech beat out equally progessive occupations such as Architect, Environmentalist, news anchor and surgeon.

Imagine that. After all the years tech enthusiasts have logged being pegged as “computer nerds” and a busty blonde plastic mold comes along and makes it trendy.

I wonder if her “Interests” would include long walks in the server room and magic gatherings. But I digress . . .

Popularity: 44% [?]