Local appliance maker snares Raytheon contract

Brisbane-based management appliance vendor Opengear has inked a deal with defence technology giant Raytheon to supply console servers which will be used for Dubai Airport's new air traffic management system.

Raytheon has deployed Opengear's Linux-based CM4000 console servers as the standard console management system behind its AutoTrac III air traffic technology.

Opengear's CM4116 and CM4148 units are used for remote administration of Raytheon's development environments, for jumpstarting its lab servers, and to provide console access to all of its servers from a central location.

Raytheon Engineering's Joseph Castellino said the company was looking for a solution to manage its Sun servers and workstations - all of which are running some version of Solaris.

"We prefer to use [the command line] for configuration because we don't always have graphics capabilities in place depending on [the] individual configuration," Castellino said. "After researching other console management applications, we knew Opengear's CM4000 console servers were the best fit for AutoTrac III."

Opengear's CM4000 serial console management technology provides secure network console management for out of band management access to LAN managed devices and service processors.

Opengear CEO Bob Waldie said for managing high-end networking and telecom gear, and headless multiplatform servers, a "plain-old serial port" is generally what is needed.

"This is exemplified by Raytheon, where [it is] remotely managing Sun servers in an extremely GUI environment," Waldie said. "But for simplicity and reliability they chose to use serial console access to meet their critical remote management needs."