Convergence believes that it is a leader in the field of developing practical and innovative technological approaches to deployment of affordable and sustainable ICT systems into remote Australia.
Our experience spans a range of project and clients but all of them have a common theme of meeting the demands of organisations for a robust, secure distributed computing environments.
Our strategies are founded on:
- Simplifying remote infrastructure to enhance its reliability and to almost eliminate the need for local support or at least reduce it to that which can be provided remotely. Thin clients are the preferred underpinning technology using tier one grade peripherals.
- Utilising consumer grade Internet services rather than expensive point to point or dedicated satellite services thereby reducing telecommunications costs by as much as 75-80%.
- Improving service reliability by providing redundant telecommunications paths that can be utilised in the event of primary link failures. Using these in conjunction with sophisticated network management services can extend service delivery options to include voice services to almost any location over the majority of consumer grade Internet services.
- Using a very bandwidth efficient terminal server technology that allows effective operation over satellite, a range of low bandwidth terrestrial technologies including dial-up, ISDN, lower grade ADSL and Telstra Next G type services. Product claims are that it requires less than 25% the bandwidth for delivery when compared to the most commonly used Citrix and MS Terminal Server products.
- Locating applications in a high availability and secure data centre using a virtualised platform to improve density of server deployment and most importantly providing rapid deployment and re-deployment options with SLA’s for time to recovery of less than 2-4hrs 7x24.
- Authentication using secure USB tokens that eliminate the need for high overhead, often satellite incompatible VPN technologies.
Of Critical importance to the model is integrated support and network management services and effective spares management, storage and deployment.
Convergence has developed this approach over more than 5 years of specialist work in this area and over a number of projects across a range of clients.
Most recently we have very successfully refined and applied these strategies in the implementation of AMSNet developed on behalf of AMSANT, the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance of the NT.AMSANT is a peak body for some 25 independent aboriginal, community controlled health services across northern SA, eastern WA and throughout the NT. The service currently includes access to primary health care systems but will be extended to email, Intranet (using Sharepoint) , virtual desk top, collaborative work tools and eventually VoIP.Currently there are over 16 clinics using the service reporting dramatic improvement in network reliability and performance over a range of telecommunications services including satellite.
Concurrent with this Convergence has been working with the NT Government in the development of the ShiresNet program for which Convergence helped the government to secure a $6.5m Clever Networks grant from DCITA for the implementation of the initiative.the architect is the design of the ShiresNet program.
