How to Find a Remote Monitoring Manufacturer with Clients, not Just Customers

"No Longer Supported" is a Huge Problem for You

Have you suffered through the bad news of discovering that a piece of gear your company buys is no longer supported? It may have worked perfectly, which is why you bought it in the first place, but now you have multiple problems to deal with.

First, support is discontinued. Maybe they call it "End Of Life", "Retired", or "No Longer Supported". Some of these terms sound nicer than others, but they all mean one thing: you're on your own.

Second, you can't buy this product anymore. You may have standardized on it. You might be willing to pay extra for it. None of that matters when a large manufacturer doesn't care about your operation.

T/Mon LNX is one example of a device that doesn't include forced obsolescence. Instead, it helps to unify remote monitoring of equipment that has evolved into a network over time.

Product Retirement is Often a Selling Strategy

The sad thing about our modern "throwaway" culture is designed obsolescence that many people have come to accept.

Companies tend to accelerate the end of the product life cycle as a sales strategy. They want to increase revenue and push you to purchase their latest and (hopefully!) greatest.

Abandoning support for the device you currently purchase may boost sales for the manufacturer, but it leaves you hanging. They're hoping that you'll be stuck needing a fast replacement. With no time to perform a cost-benefit analysis, you might just reflexively buy their newer (and probably more expensive) model.

You can never depend on a manufacturer or vendor to treat you as more than a customer. You have to look for evidence of a company that will serve you as a true client.

Find a Manufacturer Who Wants Your Long-Term Business

When you're planning your next purchase of network equipment, you need to be looking for a company and a device that will support you for perhaps 15 years into the future. This protects you, your company, and (depending on your retirement date) your successors.

You should be looking for a company that has:

1. No artificial "End of Life" dates. Some products may eventually need to be revised to replace discontinued parts, but a functional equivalent should remain available as long as possible. One good sign is a manufacturer who continues to offer 1-2 older generations of a product for those who have standardized.
2. A long list of happy clients. Look for quantity of clients, big names, repeat buying, and even just the use of the word "client" (not simply "customer").
3. Customization options. If a "manufacturer" doesn't control their own manufacturing in-house, they're far more likely to stick you with an "end of life" notice. Because they can't directly control what they build, sometimes they are stuck changing a design. On the other hand, any company that can offer custom products is far more likely to continue supporting existing designs. This makes it a valuable buying signal - even when one of their off-the-shelf products suits your needs exactly.

When Reliability Goes Unnoticed

I recently spoke with DPS Support Engineer Andy Yang about an interesting tech support call. It highlighted a lot of the above concepts about long-term manufacturing and avoiding "end of life" troubles:

"A call came in from our client who had an older generation of our alarm master stations. His T/Mon had been in service for over a decade. Our client was experiencing a slow response with the unit. It was completely functional (admittedly slower) only becoming a concern in the past few days. A quick review of the hardware and configuration revealed a heavy load on the processors. The root cause ultimately identified a failing hard-drive. We provided a replacement for the drive. Our client experienced minimal downtime - less than thirty minutes for a drive swap."

This client's support call demonstrated exactly what you should expect from your remote master alarm station - Reliability.

Designed and Manufactured For The Client

DPS engineers and manufactures it's gear all under one roof. Each component undergoes strenuous testing. Redundancy is built-in to keep you running, even if you experience those rare component failures. As your company expands, so do the workload demands. You can rely on DPS gear to keep you up.

T/Mon LNX Provides You With What You EXPECT From an Alarm Master Station

From the physical design of the unit itself to the technical support behind it, everything about T/Mon is designed for maximum reliability. T/Mon will operate efficiently under extremes of temperature, humidity, vibration and airborne contamination.

The T/Mon LNX back panel features six 10/100/1000 NICs, up to 16 polling ports, a COM port, a video out port, a fuse alarm port, a POTS line jack, a parallel printer port, a LAN connection port, and dual power feeds.

This alarm master helps you reduce costs and gives you visibility of all your remote sites. T/Mon automates the detail work of alarm notification, saving time and reducing your dependence on NOC staff. T/Mon can automatically page repair technicians and security personnel if an alarm occurs.

T/Mon LNX offers you some of these key benefits:

• On-board RAID 1 - Includes dual hard-drives providing you with true redundancy.
• Standard Warranty & Guarantee - Backed by a two-year warranty and a 30-day no-risk guarantee.
• Integrated alarm monitoring - Analog alarms, discrete alarms, environmental alarms, pings and security alarms, are presented in the same display.
• Automatic Notifications - Ensure instant, effective response to alarms (scheduling and escalation).
• Customization - If your network has unique needs, we'll create a custom design system just for you. Our business has been built on continuous innovation, and we embrace opportunities to design new network monitoring solutions.

DPS Provides Long-Term Monitoring Solutions For You and Your Company

Our support doesn't stop with the sale. We offer many additional services to help you get the most from your network monitoring. We are able to provide training for your staff, installation assistance and our top-rated technical support.

We will never leave you with a monitoring problem unsolved. At DPS Telecom, we see ourselves as your partner in monitoring your network securely and effectively. We always put the client's needs first. To get started on your search for a reliable alarm monitoring system, just give me a call at 559-454-1600 or email me at sales@dpstele.com

Andrew Erickson

Andrew Erickson is an Application Engineer at DPS Telecom, a manufacturer of semi-custom remote alarm monitoring systems based in Fresno, California. Andrew brings more than 17 years of experience building site monitoring solutions, developing intuitive user interfaces and documentation, and opt...