Another Israeli tech company has chosen Northern Virginia as its headquarters.  Selis Networks, with research and development operations in Ohr Yehuda, Israel recently moved its headquarters to Reston, VA.  The move comes on the heels of its appointment of industry veteran Tom Hillman as CEO.  Edmond de Rothschild Venture Capital Management Ltd. includes Selis Networks in its portfolio.
 
Selis also announced that it signed a master distributor agreement with Allen Corporation (www.allencorporation.com) of Fairfax, Virginia for its B-Watch network management and monitoring solution.  Allen Corporation will market B-Watch as part of its Managed Services business ('MSP') as well as resell B-Watch to value added resellers and end-user customers as a tool for network performance management and monitoring. Allen Corporation, a $30M Value Added Reseller and service provider with operations in 25 states, will provide technical support to B-Watch end users and to Value Added Resellers.
 
“Northern Virginia is a natural place for international technology firms to set up operations,” said Hillman. “There is a great talent base of engineers and business development professionals who have helped build some amazing companies.”
 
Hillman comes with an impressive resume boasting 25 years of executive experience with software, hardware, and services companies including Control Data Corporation, Apollo, H-P, Alliant, Solbourne, Scala and 90East. Hillman has also held the position of COO and managing director for two venture funds, Australia Asia Multimedia Venture and U.S. Technologies, where he has been responsible for portfolio management and operations.
 
Hillman said it was the functionality of B-Watch that brought him to Selis Networks. 
“B-Watch helps IT groups answer some of the critical questions they need to ask,” he said. “For instance, do you know the status of all of your critical Business Services? Does your e-mail service drop out?  Is your customer web site slowing down?  Is your ISP delivering the availability you are paying for?  The product has incredible capabilities.”
 
What was missing from the equation, he said, was a strong distribution network.  Allen Corporation’s presence in 25 states will give the product the exposure it needs.
 
According to Hillman, B-Watch constantly watches your critical Business Services.  The program notifies you when a critical service is having a negative impact on your ability to do business and documents trends and proactively spots emerging problems.  Said Hillman, “B-Watch watches your critical IT business services in the same way you watch your business.”
 
B-Watch is a single product used to monitor, notify and report on your critical Business Services including e-mail, web service, business office applications and more.  It automatically discovers your network and configures in minutes, does not require agents, and is completely web accessible.  B-Watch tests overall availability and alarms and trends on response time and comes with pre-configured Business Service Templates.
 
Users can configure down to the individual network interface, disk drive and application service in seconds.  B-Watch will suggest the types of business service devices to include for each critical service to be watched and display the inventory of those devices in your network environment. Select a device and B-Watch will suggest the components to include.  Its At-a-Glance display gives an instant reading of your business service’s health.  Change Indicator shows whether the business service is improving or degrading.
 
Based on the thresholds set, B-Watch notifies you the instant one of your critical business services is threatened.  Messages are targeted to the responsible person such as Email service problems to the IT manager or Web page messages to the web developer. 
 
Hillman said the product is perfect for technical administrators and business managers.  “It provides direct drill down to components and services negatively impacting your critical business service.  B-Watch takes action through a command line interface that triggers automated recovery actions and interfaces with other notification and management platforms.”