+44 (0) 845 226 4167
+44 (0) 845 226 4167
Cambridge, UK, 1 March 2011: Intergence, an IT optimisation consultancy, has successfully spun out Real-Status Ltd. a separate company focussed on the rapidly growing sector of IT visualisation.
This is the first spin-out from Intergence, with the company already working on other collaborative projects with local Cambridge companies and developing more innovative technologies with leading academic institutions.
Real Status’ first product, due to be launched in Q2 this year, was developed with Cambridge-based gaming company Geomerics with support from the East of England Development Authority and the Technology Strategy Board (TSB). Real Status came to life under the guidance of Intergence CEO, Peter Job, where the business was incubated for two years ready for spin out.
“Real Status is a great example of collaboration between the two British companies supported by the Technology Strategy Board,” said Job. “The result is a world class product that is already winning customers outside the UK and creating new jobs. The market for IT visualisation will be huge and Real-Status will help CIOs and IT managers to make informed decisions about their networks ‘at the speed of sight’.”
Commenting on the spin out, Real Status CEO Royce Murphy said: “In these tough economic times it’s clear that there is a need for companies to have a much clearer understanding of their IT infrastructure. Our flagship product, already in trials with customers and due to be launched in Q2 this year, takes techniques and know how from the computer games industry and uses it to help our customers model and understand their complete IT and network infrastructures and make more informed decisions. Every mid-sized to large enterprise uses multiple management tools for their servers, networks, security, virtualisation and storage, and it is very difficult to correlate data from multiple tools in order to make operational and planning decisions in context.”
Real Status will be going to market through Value Added Resellers (VARs) that provide consulting, implementation, training and support services. Intergence Systems is already active as the first VAR and has already successfully closed three important clients for testing with Real Status’ product.
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About Intergence
Intergence is a leading independent Networks and IT Optimisation Consultancy, headquartered in Cambridge, UK, and with regional offices in the Middle East (Dubai, UAE) and Americas (Wall Street, New York City). It was founded in 2003 to address the growing requirements of clients demanding high-level impartial expertise in networks and IT.
Intergence operates across five distinct lines of business; Network Optimisation, Data Centre Optimisation, Cloud Migration Services, Smart Energy Consolidation and Security. These five service pillars are designed with a clear and common purpose - to allow clients to extract more value from their existing IT assets.
Its clients range from small-to-medium enterprises, to major global corporations and national public institutions.
For more information visit www.Intergence.com
About Real Status Ltd
Real Status is a modelling and visualisation software company based in Cambridge, UK. Utilising sophisticated computer games graphics techniques and knowhow, it creates real-time models of enterprise’s IT infrastructure in 3D and overlays performance and business metrics, so IT managers can take informed and business-led decisions in context.
Real Status’ software is currently in final testing with multiple customers, and it will be on general release in Q2 2011. Real Status’s software models both physical and virtual devices and their relationships, and it aggregates and visualises performance metrics from multiple management tools.
For more information visit www.real-status.com
About Geomerics
Geomerics is an innovation-led company developing cutting-edge graphics technology for the games industry. It is based in Cambridge, UK, and has built a team that combines world-class management and games industry experience with some of the UK's leading researchers.
Geomerics partners with many of the leading companies in the games industry and is currently working with developers around the world on AAA titles for release in 2011 and 2012.
ANGLE plc was Geomerics’ initial investor and remains its largest shareholder.
Media contacts:
Darren Willsher
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+44 208 408 8000
Virtualisation is a vigorously expanding industry that enables enterprises to consolidate IT infrastructure and has now been embraced in some form by most enterprises. “The Cloud” is the de facto demonstration of virtualisation as a service, however, there are still many concerns regarding the Cloud which are proving to be a bar to mass migration.
Visualisation is a technique used to express data sets. Visualisation facilitates the extraction of meaning from the consolidation and mining of disparate and complex data-sources, but has yet to be widely applied to the problems surrounding migration to the Cloud. This paper aims to draw out some of these concerns and examine how visualisation could be used to complement and help drive forwards virtual migration and innovation.
“Almost all computer networks are at risk because businesses have a cavalier attitude to security” warns Rob Smith, Chief Operating Officer of Intergence Systems
Advanced evasion techniques (AET) from Intergence partner Stonesoft demonstrate how easy it is to break through firewalls
April 2011, Cambridge, UK: Audits carried out by Intergence Systems, a leading independent IT Optimisation Consultancy, has found that almost all computer networks are at risk from hacking attacks.
Intergence network security partner, Stonesoft has recently introduced 163 new Advanced Evasion Techniques (AET), a new species of evasion techniques, which can bypass 99% of existing security systems without being detected. The new samples include AETs over a number of various protocols, including IPv4, IPv6, TCP and HTTP. A practically unlimited number of combinations can be run simultaneously on several protocol layers
Evasion techniques are a way of disguising and/or modifying cyber attacks to avoid detection and blocking by information security systems.
Rob Smith, COO of Intergence, comments:
“These evasions are a real eye-opener and highlight how many businesses still have a fairly cavalier attitude to security. A combination of various dynamic modified attacks used together can evade even the most powerful of security detection devices; stealth capabilities of AETs can be used with existing worms to deliver powerful attacks.”
The number of AETs has been growing exponentially year on year and Rob Smith recommends that businesses take action to protect their networks:
Ilkka Hiidenheimo, founder and CEO of Stonesoft says:
“Very few vendors have truly understood the magnitude of the problem, while some are struggling to provide some kind of protection. Most of the vendors who acknowledge the problem are incapable of building a working solution - instead, they are keeping themselves busy doing temporary and inflexible fixes. The rest just ignore the issue and do nothing.”
Intergence employs a systematic approach of Measurement, Automation and Prediction (MAP) to delivering secure solutions that have been optimised over many years of working within business critical environments.
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Editor’s Notes
Information about the new species of evasion techniques (Advanced evasion techniques - AETs)
http://www.antievasion.com/principles/principles/part-2
About Intergence Systems
Intergence Systems (www.intergence.com) is a leading independent IT Optimisation Consultancy, headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with a regional office in the Middle East (Dubai, UAE) and was founded in 2003 to address the growing requirements of clients demanding high-level impartial expertise in networks and IT. Our close relationship within the Cambridge academic community enables us to innovate in partnership, rapidly incorporating the latest technology advances into our products and services.
Intergence operates over two distinct lines of business; people and performance. Our expertise and knowledge within the field allows us to resource the right people in the right place, getting your IT projects completed quickly and hassle free. Utilising world first products and professional optimisation services, Intergence has a clear and common purpose- to improve performance and extract more value from your IT infrastructure.
Follow Intergence on Twitter
About Stonesoft Corporation
Stonesoft Corporation (www.stonesoft.com) is an innovative provider of integrated network security solutions to secure the information flow of distributed organizations. Founded in 1990, Stonesoft Corporation is a global company with corporate headquarters in Helsinki, Finland and Americas headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Stonesoft is listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki under the symbol SFT1V.
Stonesoft has customers in more than 60 countries worldwide, including Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) and large enterprises with growing business needs requiring advanced network security and always-on business connectivity.
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For further information on Intergence, please contact:
Justine Smith/Sara Paine
KISS Public Relations
T: + 44 (0)208 12345 75
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by Peter Job:
Well, we’ve finally done it! After two years of incubation it has been a really proud moment as we are able to announce the spin-off of Real-Status from Intergence Systems. It’s a huge achievement by the two teams and has only happened through a lot of innovation and hard work.
When we started the journey over two years ago, there was a lot of scepticism particularly from the folks in Cambridge. Despite talking to a number of Cambridge groups, there was little or no acknowledgement that we might actually know what we were talking about. This was despite the fact we had a wealth of customer data from our own clients to validate our research. The idea which was originally developed by Stace Hipperson, our CTO was the culmination of a group of experiences from Stace and our consultants out on customer sites. Our view was that as IT operations became more complex, there must be a better way of seeing what was happening in the IT infrastructure?
If you could “fly” through different worlds when computer gaming why not do the same with IT infrastructure? So I approached a number of gaming companies in Cambridge and Chris Doran and Gary Lewis of Geomerics were sufficiently enlightened to see our vision too. The Technology Strategy Board also understood how innovative our technology was and we received a grant totalling £500,000.
Despite a lot of work we were unable to persuade the rest of the Cambridge community of our new products’ amazing and unique IT visualisation capability. It’s a real pity as we have had no problems raising money from just about every other part of the UK! Our funding round is complete and we were oversubscribed which puts Real-Status and its product in a great position.
What is really exciting as well is the feedback we are getting from customers. We have already signed up three new ones before the product is even formally released in April and we have two major North American IT manufacturers who want to integrate it into their product offerings.
So what’s exciting so many customers and analysts about this new product? Well, it has certainly allowed many customers and investors and analysts outside of Cambridge to clearly see through the fog. That’s because it addresses a number of key issues. These can be summarised as follows;
So even in its first few months, Real-Status is already flying with a fantastic and innovative new product. It really does see through the fog of complexity and peers so effectively into the cloud. Someday, we hope that the rest of the Cambridge folks may have the same vision!
by Dr. Steve Turner:
Well I've finally given in to the social media bandwagon and set up a twitter account. If you're interested in anything with a technology slant with the occasional bit of enthusiasm for mountain biking and gaming then follow me here: http://twitter.com/theoptimiser
by Dr. Steve Turner:
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority allocated two /8 address blocks to the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) on 1st February. This resulted in the distribution of the five remaining /8 addresses to each of the worldwide Regional Internet Registries (RIR). And thus the IPv4 address depletion is complete as predicted. Well almost. There are still millions of IP addresses which can be assigned to customers via the RIRs; a classless /8 subnet is equivalent to 16.7 million unique addresses so there is still a little way to go before complete depletion.
What does this mean for most enterprises and home users? Not a lot to begin with, there are many ways in which the existing address space can be extended to avoid rapid depletion, the most common technique is Network Address Translation / Port Address Translation (NAT / PAT) where many local hosts can share a single public IP address through translation via an Internet facing router. With the transition to IPv6 – the successor to IPv4 – similar techniques can be used to allow the two protocols (IPv6 & IPv4) to work seamlessly via dual stack protocols, tunnelling or indeed address translation. I won’t bore with you the details of IPv6 as there are millions of websites out there but if you’d like some bedtime reading try the RFC, Cisco, Microsoft and of course the students favourite Wikipedia.
Today’s mainstream operating systems (Windows 7 / 2008, Mac OS X, Linux) all support IPv6 as do the vast majority of network equipment sold today. Application support is another question all together as there are many applications out there which are only designed with IPv4 addresses in mind – this is where the real work will be required, not at Layer 3 but further up the OSI stack to Layer 7.
So the transition from a network perspective should not be too painful in the long term though remembering some of the prefixes may be a little frustrating (2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334 anyone?) Fortunately due to techniques such as EUI-64 addressing, DHCP and Stateless Autoconfiguration it gets a bit easier for both the end user and the engineer.
The truth is the immediate impact of this is very little for the corporate enterprise; The requirement for them to upgrade to IPv6 is far down the line for them as they will continue to use their IPv4 addresses for at least another 5 years if not many more. For Internet Service Providers (ISPs) this is a different matter and the requirement will come much sooner as they will need to upgrade their internal core network and this is where optimisation will be key to ensure a smooth transition to the new protocol.
© 2012 Intergence Ltd. All rights reserved.
Intergence UK Corporate Headquarters
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