(iTers News) - Sierra Wireless today announced the launch of the AirLink ES440 enterprise 4G LTE gateway and terminal server. The AirLink ES440 provides mission-critical 4G LTE connectivity when primary wireline internet connections are unavailable, making it ideal for the distributed enterprise market – customers with branch locations that are remote from the main office infrastructure. These customers require seamless connectivity and automatic failover to continuously process transactions for businesses such as retail, restaurant, and financial services chains.
Together with an enterprise router, the AirLink ES440 supports a best-in-class business continuity strategy by enabling out-of-band-management (OOBM) capability to IT administrators while leveraging the router’s failover and firewall features. This allows IT administrators to remotely troubleshoot and repair network equipment over wireless wide area networks, dramatically reducing the need to manually reset or update networking equipment on site.
“For distributed enterprise customers, network downtime means lost revenue and customers,” said Emmanuel Walckenaer, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Solutions for Sierra Wireless. “Imagine a busy retail location unable to process transactions because of a failure in its landline connection. The AirLink ES440 is a critical component in a strong IT strategy for distributed enterprises for two reasons. First, it provides a reliable backup internet connection to keep transactions flowing, using high-speed 4G LTE networks. Secondly, it allows network administrators to use the OOBM feature to remotely reboot an attached router and get their network back online without the time and expense of a site visit.”
The AirLink ES440 also includes the ability to remotely configure, deploy and monitor the gateway, and manage airtime subscriptions across multiple networks using AirVantage Management Service (AVMS). With AVMS, network administrators are also able to create configuration templates to speed up large deployments or bring new deployments online in seconds.
“For Money Mart, having a backup system to process transactions is absolutely essential. The cost of downtime is simply too high. We landed on Sierra Wireless AirLink gateways after extensive testing of multiple devices, and found that when the device needed to roll over to wireless, the Sierra Wireless platform was the only one that offered the stability we needed. The new AirLink ES440 is a perfect fit for us and will be a logical choice for our future deployments,” said Pete Wilson, Telecom and Network Administrator, Money Mart
“We use AirLink devices because of their proven stability and their excellent reputation for quality - our customers trust them. It's clear that Sierra Wireless has listened to the needs of our market in designing the new AirLink ES440 - it provides exactly what we need in terms of balancing performance, build quality, features, and cost,” said Michael Kuhlmann, CEO, Colony Networks
The AirLink ES440 is available now from Sierra Wireless distributors and resellers in North America and Europe.