This morning we are excited to announce the release of the first app for Napera Insight, our breakthrough network management service in the cloud. PC Security Informer helps IT managers prevent avoidable security compromises caused by missing security patches, ineffective antivirus and antispyware software and inoperative desktop firewalls. It’s a 100% cloud based subscription service, and you can be up and running in minutes.

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The Napera team will be at RSA 2010 in San Francisco next week, giving private demonstrations of Napera Insight.

Contact us via sales@napera.com if you would like to meet up and see the future of cloud based network management.

Thanks to our Cobalt beta testers who’ve been busy providing great feedback. A new release of the Cobalt web service shipped last month which incorporated much of the feedback from our customers, and we have another release planned in early November. The online feedback mechanism built into the Cobalt Web service has proven very popular and useful.

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Following up on the Indigo beta completed in April, we announced a new Napera beta program this week, codenamed Cobalt. End users at small and medium sized companies in the US are invited to apply at the link below. For the folks that missed out in January  – this is your second and final chance!

Napera is launching a second closed beta test of our new online service, codenamed Cobalt. The Napera Cobalt service will give you an advanced look at your network and the state of every computer connected to a compatible switch. This is our final beta release before Cobalt will be made available on a range of popular networking products from major vendors.

We will ship you a fully functional, business class, 24-port gigabit network switch. Install the switch on your network, use the Cobalt service for 30 days and keep the switch, with our thanks for participation in our beta program. Give us your feedback, ideas, and comments.

This is a limited offer for network professionals who want to get a glimpse into the future of online security services, and help to shape that future. Fill out our short survey and tell us a little bit about yourself. We want to hear from you!

The beta test is open to US residents only and will take 30 days. Approved participants are responsible for hardware shipping and handling.

Apply to participate in the Napera Cobalt Beta Test by completing this questionnaire.

This beta is for end-users – no partners or vendors please.

Chris, Heather and I are at Interop 2009  in sunny Las Vegas  this week, giving private demonstrations of the Napera online service for the Marvell Prestera switch and ISSR Converged Digital Office platforms announced on Monday. It’s been very busy so far — in fact, today we are booked out completely with meetings — and the interest levels have been extremely high.

Contact us via sales@napera.com if you would like to meet up and see the future of cloud based security services.

This morning we are excited to publicize many months of design and development work that has been going on behind the scenes at Napera and Marvell. As announced in today’s press release, Napera is collaborating with Marvell to deliver the Napera network security experience on Marvell’s Prestera DX and Integrated Secure-Switch-Router platforms. Marvell commands a large market share in the silicon that powers SMB and SME network products, and is the market leader in Ethernet switching silicon.

This is an exciting new paradigm that will enable millions of SMB and SME customers to enjoy the Napera security experience. The secret to creating this new solution was leveraging the high performance Sheeva CPU that Marvell has integrated in the Prestera DX line of switching silicon. Networking vendors who build products using Marvell can offer the Napera security service, delivered as part of Marvell’s production-ready Marvell Total Solution (MTS) software and silicon.

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Napera scored a great review last week from Steve Hultquist at Infoworld, with an 8.2 score out of 10. This was great news coming on the heels of the other positive reviews we’ve received lately.

Steve was quick to recognize the power of leveraging cloud-based management and reporting in order to design a network security product that is easier to use and deploy. I was pleased to see we scored a perfect 10 on setup, and a very encouraging 9 out of 10 points on manageability and value.

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Several members of the Napera team will be attending the 2009 RSA Conference next week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Send us a note at info@napera.com if you would like to meet up.

See you in San Francisco!

Thanks to everyone who responded to our call for Napera Indigo beta testers back in February.

We accepted 120 applicants out of the 600 submissions we received. Over a six week period, beta testers around the US deployed and tested Indigo units on their networks.  Our online service processed info on more than 6000 network devices in the first few weeks. The testers completed 771 surveys to tell us what they liked and didn’t like, and the value they saw in the Indigo product. The feedback was very positive, informed, constructive, and incredibly valuable to us during product development. Thank again to all the beta testers from the team here at Napera.

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Although it’s been quiet on the blogging front, we’ve been fortunate to have some positive reviews of Napera products out there on the Interwebs in the last month.

Matt over at Hak5 signed up for the Napera Indigo beta test last month and gave our product a thorough workout on screen in Hak5 Episode 501. He followed up in Episode 502 with an overview of Napera authentication on wireless networks. The team at Hak5 certainly look like they have a lot of fun reviewing products, but we’re still waiting for our challenge to a game of Left4Dead!

Randy George at InformationWeek followed up with an extensive review of the Napera N24, calling it a ‘unique beast’ that ‘puts a wide array of capabilities into a single package that deploys in minutes’. We especially liked the following quote in these cost conscious times.

From a budget perspective, if you’re planning to spend a couple of thousand dollars on a lower-end 24-port Gigabit Ethernet switch and firewall, it might make sense to pony up a little more cash and get the turnkey NAC and captive portal features that N24 provides. If you’re upgrading to Windows Server 2008 just to add NAP to your mix of security tools, the N24 makes even more sense once you factor in the hardware and licensing costs.