NorthStar Controller vs. IBM Network Services

Control D is a versatile DNS filtering and traffic redirection service that utilizes advanced Secure DNS protocols such as DNS-over-HTTPS, DNS-over-TLS, and DNS-over-QUIC, while also accommodating traditional DNS. With Control D, users can effectively eliminate harmful threats, restrict various types of undesirable content across the network—including advertisements, trackers, IoT data, adult material, social media, and more—while also redirecting traffic through transparent proxies and monitoring network activities and usage patterns at a client-specific level. Consider it your own personalized Authoritative DNS resolver for the entire Internet, providing you with detailed control over which domains are allowed to be resolved, redirected, or blocked. This capability not only enhances security but also empowers users to tailor their online experience according to their preferences.

Auvik Network Management offers a sophisticated software solution for network oversight that enables IT experts to gain comprehensive insight, automate processes, and manage their network infrastructure effectively. Organizations, regardless of their scale, rely on this cutting-edge platform to improve operational efficiency, bolster security measures, and enhance performance metrics. A key highlight of Auvik is its ability to provide real-time network mapping and discovery, which automatically creates interactive visual representations of your network’s layout. This feature simplifies the identification of devices, connections, and possible bottlenecks within the network. Such critical insights facilitate better planning and optimization of network architecture, ensuring peak efficiency and reliability. By leveraging Auvik’s capabilities, organizations can proactively address issues and adapt to changing network demands.

TotalView provides comprehensive network monitoring and straightforward root-cause analysis of issues, using clear, accessible language. This solution tracks every device and all interfaces associated with those devices, ensuring nothing is overlooked. Furthermore, TotalView delves deep by gathering 19 different error counters, along with performance metrics, configuration details, and connectivity data, allowing for a holistic view of the network. An integrated heuristics engine processes this wealth of information to deliver clear, easily understandable insights into problems. With this system, even junior engineers can tackle complex issues, freeing up senior engineers to concentrate on higher-level strategic initiatives. The main product encompasses all essential tools required for maintaining an optimally functioning network, including configuration management, server and cloud service monitoring, IP address management (IPAM), NetFlow analysis, path mapping, and diagramming capabilities. By utilizing TotalView, you can achieve complete visibility of your network, enabling you to resolve issues more swiftly and efficiently, ultimately enhancing overall network performance.

Google Cloud serves as an online platform where users can develop anything from basic websites to intricate business applications, catering to organizations of all sizes. New users are welcomed with a generous offer of $300 in credits, enabling them to experiment, deploy, and manage their workloads effectively, while also gaining access to over 25 products at no cost. Leveraging Google's foundational data analytics and machine learning capabilities, this service is accessible to all types of enterprises and emphasizes security and comprehensive features. By harnessing big data, businesses can enhance their products and accelerate their decision-making processes. The platform supports a seamless transition from initial prototypes to fully operational products, even scaling to accommodate global demands without concerns about reliability, capacity, or performance issues. With virtual machines that boast a strong performance-to-cost ratio and a fully-managed application development environment, users can also take advantage of high-performance, scalable, and resilient storage and database solutions. Furthermore, Google's private fiber network provides cutting-edge software-defined networking options, along with fully managed data warehousing, data exploration tools, and support for Hadoop/Spark as well as messaging services, making it an all-encompassing solution for modern digital needs.

Statseeker stands out as a robust network performance monitoring solution, designed to be both rapid and scalable while also being budget-friendly. With the capability to set up on a single server or virtual machine in mere minutes, Statseeker can map out your entire network in less than an hour, all without significantly affecting your bandwidth availability. It supports monitoring for networks of various sizes, polling up to a million interfaces every minute and gathering an array of network data types, including SNMP, ping, NetFlow (along with sFlow and J-Flow), syslog, trap messages, SDN configurations, and health metrics. What sets Statseeker apart is its approach to performance data, which are never averaged or rolled up, thereby removing uncertainty in tasks such as root cause analysis, capacity planning, and identifying over- or under-utilized infrastructure. The solution's comprehensive data retention allows its built-in analytical engine to accurately recognize performance anomalies and predict network behaviors well in advance, empowering network administrators to engage in proactive maintenance rather than merely addressing issues as they arise. Furthermore, Statseeker provides intuitive dashboards and ready-to-use reports, enabling users to identify and resolve network issues before they impact end users, ensuring a smoother and more reliable network experience overall.

Vehicle Acquisition Network (VAN) is a purpose-built vehicle sourcing platform that enables car dealerships to acquire high-margin, fast-turning used vehicles directly from private sellers—bypassing auctions, reducing acquisition costs, and accelerating inventory turn. Today’s automotive market is more competitive than ever. Wholesale prices are climbing, auction fees are rising, and reconditioning delays eat into profitability. VAN solves this by giving dealers the tools and talent they need to target, engage, and acquire for-sale-by-owner (FSBO) vehicles in their local market with speed and efficiency. With VAN, dealers can: Access thousands of local private-party listings in real time Use AI-powered filters to find the most profitable cars Automate personalized outreach and follow-up with sellers Track communications, tasks, and acquisition progress in one unified CRM Eliminate auction fees, transport delays, and wholesale surprises For stores that lack time or staff to do this work in-house, VAN also offers a Managed Buyer program—a turnkey service where VAN’s expert acquisition team works on your behalf to find, contact, and negotiate with private sellers. It’s like hiring a full-time buyer without the overhead. Whether you're a single rooftop looking for more control or a large group scaling a private-party acquisition strategy, VAN adapts to your dealership's workflow and goals. Dealers using VAN regularly see faster turn times, higher front-end grosses, and more predictable inventory pipelines. Trusted by over 250 rooftops across the U.S. and Canada, VAN is how modern dealers compete with Carvana, CarMax, and other direct-to-consumer disruptors—by sourcing smarter, not just spending more.

UTunnel Secure Access offers solutions including Cloud VPN, ZTNA, and Mesh Networking to facilitate secure remote connections and reliable network performance. ACCESS GATEWAY: Our Cloud VPN as a Service allows for the rapid deployment of VPN servers on either Cloud or On-Premise setups. By employing OpenVPN and IPSec protocols, it ensures secure remote connections complemented by policy-driven access controls, enabling businesses to establish a robust VPN network effortlessly. ONE-CLICK ACCESS: The Zero Trust Application Access (ZTAA) feature revolutionizes secure interaction with internal business applications such as HTTP, HTTPS, SSH, and RDP. Users can conveniently access these services via their web browsers without the necessity of any client-side applications. MESHCONNECT: This solution, combining Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and mesh networking, offers detailed access controls tailored to specific business network resources and fosters the formation of secure, interconnected business networks for enhanced collaboration. SITE-TO-SITE VPN: Additionally, the Access Gateway allows for the establishment of secure IPSec Site-to-Site tunnels, which facilitate connections between UTunnel's VPN servers and other network infrastructure components like gateways, firewalls, routers, and unified threat management (UTM) systems, thereby enhancing overall network security. By integrating these features, UTunnel Secure Access is committed to providing comprehensive solutions that meet the evolving needs of modern businesses.

A cloud-based solution designed for managing retail spaces, product categories, and planograms is now available. It features intelligent automation that generates planograms based on sales data, ensuring that planograms remain up-to-date even across extensive retail networks with multiple locations. Quant serves as a comprehensive tool for Space Planning and Category Management, including functionalities for planograms, product ranging, shelf labels, POS printing, in-store communication, and marketing. Leveraging the advantages of cloud computing, Quant Cloud enables teams to collaborate on projects from anywhere in the world, accessing the same database seamlessly across various devices. There’s no requirement for complex infrastructure setups or additional strain on your IT resources. Our team of consultants is readily available to provide support, training your staff and facilitating data integration, allowing Quant to be operational in under 12 weeks. This efficient onboarding process means you can quickly start reaping the benefits of improved retail management.

NetCrunch is a modern, scalable network monitoring and observability platform designed to simplify infrastructure and traffic management across physical, virtual, and cloud environments. It monitors everything from servers, switches, and firewalls to operating systems, cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP, including IoT, virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V), applications, logs, and custom data via REST, SNMP, WMI, or scripts-all without agents. NetCrunch offers over 670 built-in monitoring packs and policies that automatically apply based on device role, enabling fast setup and consistent configuration across thousands of nodes. Its dynamic maps, real-time dashboards, and Layer 2/3 topology views provide instant visibility into the health and performance of the entire infrastructure. Unlike legacy tools like SolarWinds, PRTG, or WhatsUp Gold, NetCrunch uses simple node-based licensing with no hidden costs, eliminating sensor limits and pricing traps. It includes intelligent alert correlation, alert automation & suppression, and proactive triggers to minimize noise and maximize clarity, along with 40+ built-in alert actions including script execution, email, SMS, webhooks, and seamless integrations with tools like Jira, PagerDuty, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. Out-of-the -box AI-enhanced root cause analysis and recommendation for every alert. NetCrunch also features full hardware and software inventory, device configuration backup and change tracking, bandwidth analysis, flow monitoring (NetFlow, sFlow, IPFIX), and flexible REST-based data ingestion. Designed for speed, automation, and scale, NetCrunch enables IT teams to monitor thousands of devices from a single server, reducing manual work while delivering actionable insights instantly. Designed for on-prem (including air-gapped), cloud self-hosted or hybrid networks, it is the ideal future-ready monitoring platform for businesses that demand simplicity, power, and total infrastructure awareness.

Strengthen your organization's security posture and simplify compliance with major regulatory standards like ISO 27001, GDPR, and HIPAA using Proton's software-based VPN solution. Designed for easy and seamless integration with your existing infrastructure, Proton VPN for Business provides a flexible and scalable way to protect your organization. All our plans use strong encryption algorithms such AES-256 or ChaCha20 to keep your data secure in transit. You can further enhance your company's endpoint security with enforced two-factor authentication (2FA) and effortless single sign-on (SSO) user access. And with full support for SCIM, you can seamlessly automate provisioning and user management across your organization. With the Proton VPN Professional plan, you can assign dedicated VPN servers and Gateways (logical groupings of dedicated servers), and segment access based on each individual's role or department to ensure employees only connect to the resources they need. This approach enhances both security and operational efficiency across distributed teams and hybrid environments. Proton VPN is part of a suite of open source end-to-end encrypted tools created by the team behind Proton Mail. Backed by a large global server network, our platform delivers high-speed (up to 10 Gbps) connections and trustworthy privacy protection, making it ideal for businesses of all sizes that prioritize data security and compliance.