5.0 out of 5 stars
(54 Ratings)
Vehicle Acquisition Network (VAN) is buy center software for franchise and independent auto dealerships, built for buying used cars directly from private sellers. Dealers use it to buy from consumers in their market before those cars reach the auction lane.
How it works:
- VAN scans 25+ online marketplaces for for-sale-by-owner vehicles and puts them in one dashboard, matched to your buy box (year, make, model, mileage) inside your territory.
- It filters out listings from other dealers, scam listings, and Do-Not-Call numbers, decodes each VIN, and adds live market valuation.
- Your buyer calls, texts, and emails sellers from inside VAN, and every conversation stays attached to the vehicle.
- One click pushes a car into vAuto, where your manager appraises it. CARFAX and AutoCheck reports run inside VAN.
- VAN runs inside VINCUE Buy Center Pro as VAN Mode, where VINCUE applies your buy plan to each private-seller car.
Plans:
- Professional ($1,695/month): the core platform plus an Acquisition Coach™, an experienced private-party buyer who meets with your team. Every plan includes one.
- VAN Accelerate™ ($2,495/month): adds automated text and email outreach, automated follow-up for unresponsive sellers, automatic replies to KBB ICO leads within minutes, and automatic responses to AccuTrade leads.
- VAN Managed Buyer™ ($5,995/month, 90-day initial term): VAN hires, trains, and manages a full-time buyer who works only for your store on sourcing, outreach, and negotiation. Your desk inspects, makes the final buy decision, and signs the check.
Listed prices are starting rates; final price depends on territory size and number of users. Software plans go live in about four days, and Canadian dealers are billed in CAD.
VAN was founded in 2013 by Tom Gregg and serves dealers in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada. To see VAN on your market, call 855-952-4949.
Learn more about Vehicle Acquisition Network (VAN)
4.4 out of 5 stars
(41 Ratings)
If your cloud bill has become harder to predict than your revenue, OpenMetal is worth a look.
We provide hosted private cloud and dedicated bare metal infrastructure as a service. Our private cloud is built on OpenStack and Ceph, with fully managed hardware, and priced on a flat-rate model that doesn't punish you for growth. No per-resource metering, no egress surprises, no bill that requires a spreadsheet to decode.
Our private cloud platform gives organizations dedicated hardware and full OpenStack access without the overhead of building or maintaining their own infrastructure. Deploy a private cloud in under an hour, integrate with your existing tools, and hand the operational burden to us.
For teams that need raw compute power without virtualization overhead, our bare metal servers offer dedicated hardware with the same transparent pricing and fast deployment. Run standalone or connect directly to an OpenMetal private cloud for a flexible hybrid setup.
OpenMetal is a practical choice for organizations running compute-intensive or latency-sensitive workloads including blockchain validators, AI and machine learning pipelines, high-frequency applications, and regulated industries where data residency and compliance requirements rule out shared public cloud environments.
If you're managing infrastructure costs at scale, moving workloads off a hyperscaler, or simply need dedicated hardware that performs consistently, OpenMetal gives you a straightforward path to get there without building everything yourself.
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Apache Knox
The Knox API Gateway operates as a reverse proxy that prioritizes pluggability in enforcing policies through various providers while also managing backend services by forwarding requests. Its policy enforcement mechanisms cover an extensive array of functionalities, such as authentication, federation, authorization, auditing, request dispatching, host mapping, and content rewriting rules. This enforcement is executed through a series of providers outlined in the topology deployment descriptor associated with each secured Apache Hadoop cluster. Furthermore, the definition of the cluster is detailed within this descriptor, allowing the Knox Gateway to comprehend the cluster's architecture for effective routing and translation between user-facing URLs and the internal operations of the cluster. Each secured Apache Hadoop cluster has its own set of REST APIs, which are recognized by a distinct application context path unique to that cluster. As a result, this framework enables the Knox Gateway to protect multiple clusters at once while offering REST API users a consolidated endpoint for access. This design not only enhances security but also improves efficiency in managing interactions with various clusters, creating a more streamlined experience for users. Additionally, the comprehensive framework ensures that developers can easily customize policy enforcement without compromising the integrity and security of the clusters.
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Knox
Knox is a secret management solution created to securely store and rotate sensitive information, including secrets, keys, and passwords used across various services. At Pinterest, a wide range of keys and secrets are relied upon for numerous purposes, such as signing cookies, encrypting sensitive data, securing the network with TLS, accessing AWS machines, and interacting with third-party services. The potential for these keys to be compromised presented major challenges, as rotating them often required a deployment and usually involved modifications to the codebase. Previously, keys and secrets were kept in Git repositories at Pinterest, which led to their widespread replication throughout the organization's infrastructure and on numerous employee laptops, making it nearly impossible to monitor access and audit permissions for their use. To tackle these challenges, Knox was designed to make it easier for developers to securely access and manage confidential secrets, keys, and credentials. It guarantees the confidentiality of these sensitive assets while incorporating strong mechanisms for key rotation in case of a security breach, thereby significantly improving security practices. By adopting Knox, Pinterest seeks to not only enhance its secret management processes but also to strengthen its defenses against potential vulnerabilities, ensuring that sensitive information remains protected at all times. This proactive approach reflects Pinterest's commitment to safeguarding its data and maintaining trust with its users.
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