Enable always-on availability

Case Study: Failover to Cellular enables furniture retailer to ensure business continuity

Opengear Failover to Cellular™ (F2C) provides continued internet connectivity for remote LANs and equipment over high-speed 4G LTE or 3G networks when the primary link is unavailable. Ensuring speed to keep the network running smoothly and link diversity for true WAN resilience, Failover to Cellular is built on robust IP Passthrough technology. This allows for easy integration into existing installs or can be rapidly deployed for instant-on connectivity for new networks and branch locations.

This feature is useful for an SD-WAN deployment. SD-WAN enables organizations to reduce costs and maintain secure network connections, however the high bandwidth internet connections, routers and constant firmware updates associated with this can introduce a single point of failure. If the network goes down during a deployment, Smart OOB™ and Failover to Cellular ensures secondary access to the routers to easily reflash or power cycle. NetOps staff are able to remotely get the network backup and running without an onsite visit.
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Increase resilience and remediation

Failover to Cellular allows organizations to maintain connectivity and decrease disruption with ensured business continuity. Easily integrating with existing IT systems and network infrastructure, F2C restores WAN connectivity without manual intervention. Utilized with Smart Out-of-Band  (Smart OOB), which is built into all Opengear devices, organizations are able to have remote access even when WAN and LAN networks are down. During an outage, in order to remediate the problem as quickly as possible, network engineers must have visibility of the whole network. Smart OOB provides engineers with full visibility to maximize uptime and reduce outages.

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Remediate issues remotely

Distributed enterprises often times may experience disruption events that effect the primary network connection. Failover to Cellular built-in to Opengear devices, automatically activate a secondary connection to re-establish in and outbound network access. Once failover is enabled, Opengear devices are able to detect failures sending ICMP ping requests from the primary network interface to a primary and secondary probe address remotely. If these requests fail – the primary connection has been deemed as having also failed. When the primary connection has been restored, the devices automatically fail forward and resumes normal operation.

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HOPKINS, Minn., November 7, 2019 – Digi International® Inc., (Nasdaq: DGII, www.digi.com), a leading global provider of Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity products, software and services today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Opengear, Inc., a provider of secure IT infrastructure products and software.  The closing of the transaction is subject to customary conditions, including antitrust regulatory clearance.

Founded in 2004, Opengear delivers critical IT infrastructure, including failover-to-cellular and out-of-band management solutions, to a broad range of Fortune 100 and other customers. Its provisioning, orchestration and remote management of network devices, through innovative software and appliances, enables technical staff to manage their data centers and remote network locations. Opengear is headquartered in Edison, New Jersey, with R&D centers in Silicon Valley and Brisbane, Australia, with an additional office in Sandy, Utah. Opengear is expected to retain its existing office locations and future office consolidations, if any, will be designed to minimize disruption to employees and customers.

Digi has agreed to acquire Opengear for upfront cash of approximately $140 million with a potential for contingent consideration of up to an additional $15 million based on revenue performance through 2020. To finance the purchase, Digi expects to use a combination of cash on hand and debt financing under a $150 million facility that BMO Harris Bank N.A. has committed to provide to Digi.  Canaccord Genuity served as financial advisor to Digi on the acquisition, Stephens Inc. advised Digi in obtaining the debt commitment, and Faegre Baker Daniels LLP served as legal counsel to Digi on the transactions.  Digi expects the acquisition to be immediately accretive to earnings.

“Joining forces with Opengear gives customers an expansive, high-value, technology portfolio that is hardware enabled and software defined,” said Ron Konezny, President and CEO of Digi International. “Both companies have a deep commitment to our customers and will continue to invest in product development to deliver business- and mission-critical solutions.”

“Digi and Opengear will mesh well as we share so many of the same values in how we treat our customers and employees,” said Opengear CEO Gary Marks. “Our products are complementary, so customers and partners will get exceptional choice.”

An investor presentation pertaining to the acquisition can be found at the investor relations section of Digi’s website.

About Digi International 
Digi International (Nasdaq: DGII) is a leading global provider of business and mission-critical Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity products and solutions. We help our customers create next-generation connected products and solutions to deploy, monitor and manage critical communications infrastructures and compliance standards in demanding environments with high levels of security, relentless reliability and bulletproof performance. Founded in 1985, we’ve helped our customers connect over 100 million things, and growing. Visit www.digi.com.

About Opengear

Opengear delivers secure, resilient access and automation to critical IT infrastructure, even when the network is down. Provisioning, orchestration and remote management of network devices, through innovative software and appliances, enables technical staff to manage their data centers and remote network locations reliably and efficiently. Opengear’s business continuity solutions are trusted by global organizations across financial, digital communications, retail and manufacturing industries. Visit www.opengear.com.

Forward-Looking Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are based on management’s current expectations and assumptions. These statements often can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “may,” “will,” “expect,” “plan,” “project,” “should,” or “continue” or the negative thereof or other variations thereon or similar terminology. Among other items, these statements relate to expectations about the certainty and timing of completing the transactions, future business performance of the business expected to be purchased in the above described acquisition as well as future actions, operations and performance of Digi following the pending acquisition. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including risks related to satisfaction of the closing conditions, whether our business will perform as anticipated, our ability to integrate the acquired business effectively, the potential growth or entrance in the marketplace of competitors, some of whom may have significantly more resources than us, whether the intended target market for the products of the acquired business will adopt our offerings, whether we will be able to sell the products of the acquired business effectively into the marketplace, whether we will be able to leverage the product development and engineering resources of the acquired business effectively, rapid changes in technologies that may displace products and services we intend to sell, delays in product development efforts, uncertainty in user acceptance of our products and services, the ability to maintain key customer and vendor relationships of the acquired company, the ability to integrate our products and services with those of other parties in a commercially accepted manner, potential liabilities that can arise if any of our products have design or manufacturing defects, our ability to defend or settle satisfactorily any litigation, uncertainty in global economic conditions and economic conditions within particular regions of the world which could negatively affect product demand and the financial solvency of customers and suppliers, the impact of natural disasters and other events beyond our control that could negatively impact our supply chain and customers, our ability to attract and retain important employees, potential unintended consequences associated with restructuring or other similar business initiatives that may impact our ability to retain important employees and our ability to execute on the business to achieve the anticipated benefits and synergies associated with the transaction. These and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions identified from time to time in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, including without limitation, our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2018 and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other filings, could cause the Digi’s future results to differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements made by us or on our behalf. Many of such factors are beyond our ability to control or predict. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date for which they are made. We disclaim any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Media Contact:
Melinda Ball
LEWIS
Office: +1 781-418-2400
Digi@teamlewis.com

Investor Contact:

Jamie Loch

Digi International

Sr. Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer

+1 (952) 912-3737

Jamie.Loch@digi.com

Ensuring Always-On Availability for Distributed Healthcare Sites

One of the largest multinational pharmaceutical companies in the world needed a new Out-of-Band vendor. Constantly facing latency challenges, the organization needed to ensure always-on availability to its multiple distributed sites. Watch this video to learn how they’ve increased uptime, improved productivity and ensured network resilience.

To learn more about network resilience solutions for your healthcare organization, you can read our whitepaper today!

Opengear’s Lighthouse has reached another milestone. We now support all of the Big 3 cloud providers, adding AWS support in the latest release. With options for deploying all major Hypervisors and Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure and and Google’s GCE you have options for how you deploy the smartest out-of-band management solution available today.

In addition to AWS support, Lighthouse 2019.Q3.0 introduces the ability to centrally manage backups for all of your connected Opengear Nodes as well as secure LDAP/S communication.

Find out all the details here and get your copy today.

Download our White Paper today!
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There has been a widespread move towards SD-WAN in the financial sector. An industry that embraced features such as online banking and mobile apps, is continuing the tech forward mindset by using technology to improve network performance, communications and speed. IoT and mobile devices are just a few applications that have increased customer expectations and to continue to meet these, financial institutions must build their online engagement model. As more are added to the network, performance can suffer and onsite technicians distributed sites are few and far between. Providing improved security, reliability and performance, SD-WAN ensures a more streamlined solution with less need for a technician onsite. Additional benefits of SD-WAN for financial institutions include:

Bandwidth Optimization

More than 36% of organizations have chosen to move to SD-WAN because of the optimization of bandwidth.¹ Providing the ability to utilize a variety of connectivity options, most jump at the chance to eliminate expensive MPLS circuits, it continually searches for the best path as it carries packets across the network. This is an immediate benefit, as other most other solutions have little capability to actually prioritize the data being carried.

This allows financial organizations to use lower priced bandwidth products, without sacrificing quality or consistency. It also provides consistent communications – with the amount of transactions being processed in finance this is a necessity. Now these organizations like credit unions and banks, with distributed locations, can also switch to lower data packages allowing them to reduce costs and improve communications.

WAN Integration

Finance has a variety of business distribution models – each with challenging network needs. Requiring an always-on network, any small disruptions can quickly escalate. In fact, 28% of organizations indicate that the ability to use existing architecture in an aging network is a major concern. SD-WAN provides organizations with greater control over solution used across each network.

Automation at Distributed Sites

Financial institutions have distributed locations and without the proper solution, functioning as a cohesive unit can be a challenge and if not properly managed, it can become a source of operational and financial inefficiency. This makes SD-WAN a perfect fit for these distributed organizations. More than 28% of organizations state a need for improved automation and self provisioning for their network.² This would allow financial institutions to manage and view the WAN as one entity, instead of treating each endpoint as a standalone resource.

SD-WAN has a variety of benefits, but it does have points of failure. To learn about adding Smart Out-of-Band to your next deployment for always-on access, see our storygraphic.

1 https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS44203118

2 https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2018/10/25/sd–wan-survey.aspx

Network resilience from core to edge in financial networks

Learn how one of the top performing banks in the United States utilized Opengear smart solutions to decrease their downtime, reduce the need for site visits, and ensure compliance requirements are met.

To learn more about network resilience solutions for your financial organization, please download our whitepaper today!

What’s IP-based, cost efficient and rapidly replacing Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) infrastructure? That would be 4G LTE. Over the past few years, many organizations are moving towards deploying newer technologies like 4G LTE instead of legacy POTS lines to use for Out-of-Band (OOB) connectivity or site backup. Opengear has been on the front of the technology wave, providing embedded cellular as part of our Out-of-Band offering since 2010. We understand the ins and outs of this technology boom- like how LTE allows for Smart Out-of-Band™ (Smart OOB) to be easily implemented into any infrastructure with its reliable, fast and secure failover for wireless connections.

Using POTS Lines

Remember the 80’s and 90’s and those sweet sounds of modems training up to provide blazing fast connections of 38400 Baud? Now do you remember the disconnects during downloads, the no answers and the busy signals? These memories are starting to quickly become not so fond. Do you want to run your OOB emergency access to infrastructure like this? Most would say no. The truth is carriers want to move away from POTS due to the cost of maintaining copper lines. This cost is passed on to you if you happen to be in an area where you can still get a POTS line. Most office phone connections today are now VOIP and running POTS over VOIP can be challenging as well. All of the these have contributed to the decline of POTS usage, in fact, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is vying for POTS lines to transition to wireless connectivity – which most already seem to be doing. The National Health Center has projected that only 6% of the population are actually using POTS lines.¹

Top 3 Reasons For the Replacing POTS Lines

1. Maintenance: The Communication Workers of America reports that many phone companies aren’t consistently repairing phone lines due to the cost, which delays how quickly linemen are sent out on calls. It’s estimated that $13 billion is spent every year to maintain old telephone networks – and from that kind of investment the benefits gained in return aren’t notable.² In fact, in 2018 carriers including Verizon and AT&T will no longer have to install or maintain existing POTS lines. This means that POTS lines services and maintenance prices, which already are high, may increase. The Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) states that there’s disincentive for phone companies to spend on infrastructure.
2. Inclement Weather: Rain, lightning strikes, snow and tornadoes, when inclement weather strikes, many times phone companies are left to try and quickly remediate the issue not knowing where to start when the damage is excessive. In just a matter of seconds, these weather events can take out a landline.
3. Costs: When it comes to maintaining POTS lines it can become costly with all of the purchasing needed for onsite hardware, IT resources needed for reconfigures and power cycle modems that are not responding. On average, it can cost $50 to $100 per month to have one POTS line and keep in mind you need two, one calling line and one answering line. Anyone that has already invested in the infrastructure can head on over to POTS to cellular return on investment (ROI) calculator to see how cellular will pay for itself.

Failover to Cellular by Opengear

Opengear has made the most dependable console server which can be seen within the features of each device. Our console servers enable uninterrupted availability for remote networks utilizing 4G LTE for either OOB needs or failover needs and remediates network issues remotely by providing a cellular backup to small remote sites. Need more reasons to switch to cellular?

• Opengear’s IP interface is always available, but we also provide other options to have it deactivated by default and utilize SMS or Failover mechanisms for activation. This allows you to control when the IP address is reachable, eliminating unwanted guests. In addition, we also have a built-in firewall to allow you to tightly control who has access when the interface is active. Being an IP interface you can also monitor it with network tools ensuring maximum availability and visibility.
• It’s inexpensive! Carrier plans start as low as $5/month for 1 MB of data. That doesn’t sound like much in today’s world – but for OOB purposes, it’s a great start. Your average SSH session to a router console to issue some commands run from 200 to 400k worth of data! If you do need more data, you can raise the data plan to accommodate your needs. Below are some going rates for the major carriers in the US:
  • Verizon
  • AT&T

Don’t take our word for it, reach out to your carrier of choice and ask them about their Machine 2 Machine plans for IoT devices. If you do plan on using Opengear as a failover connection, you will need to choose a data rate plan accordingly because there is more data than just for OOB usage.

• Opengear devices provide both Out-of-Band and Failover to Cellular™ (F2C) capabilities. This allows you to not only use it for Out-of-Band, but also as a backup data circuit using the LTE interface as an internet connection, or if you add in IPSEC/VPN back to your main site, a backup link. This will allow your users to stay connected at remote locations if and when the primary WAN service were to go down.

Make your job easier. Don’t rely on antiquated modems and traditional lines as your troubleshoot, backup connection. Upgrade yourself to Opengear’s OOB and failover to increase your network’s resiliency using our embedded cellular technology. This means better availability, reliability, dependability monitoring and performance – all at a fraction of the cost of a POTS line connection.

To learn more about Smart Out-of-Band and F2C by Opengear, please watch our demo video.

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1 https://www.compuvoip.com/the-end-of-the-pstn-2/

2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/10/08/we-spend-billions-a-year-maintaining-phone-lines-almost-nobody-depends-on-should-we-get-rid-of-them/?utm_term=.420cc5dae515

Opengear’s Failover to Cellular™ solutions deliver always-on connectivity and resilience in the face of network failure events

• The cost of network disruption has never been higher, averaging more than $100k per hour for most industries
• No single wired connection can deliver 100% uptime. The question isn’t “whether” but “when” each of your remote sites will lose connectivity
• Failover to Cellular eliminates downtime with transparent failover to high speed 4G LTE when your primary connection fails
• Combined with Opengear SmartOOB™ for out-of-band management, Failover to Cellular (F2C) delivers high network availability and improved IT Resilience all in one single product.

Failover to Cellular (F2C) and Smart OOB

• Continuously monitors and alerts you to potential problems before they disrupt your network
• Automatically initiates action in response to defined events and remediates common network issues
• Provides always-on out-of-band access to maintain and restore critical infrastructure
• The result is increased MTBF and reduced MTTR from disruption — and a significantly more resilient network