Pertino - a 3-year-old California startup -- rolled out AppScape, a portal to access apps that run on that network, including a location-monitoring application and another one that tracks usage of a customer's devices on the networks.
AppScape is available today and all of the apps come bundled with the business edition of Pertino's products, which allows for up to 20 devices to be connected to an unlimited number of networks for $49 per month or $490 per year.
Pertino is taking the next step in the evolution of its networking as a service platform by introducing applications that run on top of their easy to spin up networks.
Pertino uses advanced software-defined networking and virtual networking capabilities to provide a hosted networking service to customers. Through an online portal and custom interface applications users can spin up and manage as many secure networks as they want.
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Pertino's networks can be used for a variety of reasons. The St. Louis Rams football's scouts use Pertino to file field reports from across the country over a decided network connection. Many companies use Pertino to support mobile use workforces. Customers connect to any Wifi network, then spin up Pertino's app to have a secure, dedicated network connection back to a campus office, for example.
In addition to managing field employees, Pertino has recently found customers using the networks as a hybrid cloud enablement tool. In this scenario secure network connections would be set up between a customer's premises and Amazon Web Services cloud, for instance, ensuring that only approved traffic can flow on that network. While AWS offers Virtual Private Networks (VPC), Pertino Chief Marketing Officer Todd Krautkremer said the process to set it up is cumbersome and complicated, requiring configurations of IP addresses and security groups. With Pertino, networks are spun up with a few clicks and strokes of a keyboard. Authorizing devices on the network is simple and the networks can connect any sites or devices if they run the Pertino app.
In addition to the location tracking and usage monitoring apps, there is another one that lets Active Directory be hosted from one of the devices on a Pertino network. An app named NameStation removes the need to use IP addresses and instead allows text to be used to manage networks; and Pertino desktop is a remote desktop app.
Pertino says the rolling out of an app store is the next natural step in the company's journey to move from the small and midsized business market up into larger enterprise accounts. The company says more than 5,000 companies have used its free service and it has hundreds of paying customers, including about a half-dozen customers who are managing more than 100 devices on the company's networks.
