UNICOM Engineering can help you to find your best option for OEM appliances and hardware platforms

What is an appliance?

UNICOM Engineering subscribes to Gartner’s definition of an appliance as, “a computing entity that delivers predefined service(s) through an application-specific interface with no accessible operating software.” This definition reflects what enterprise customers want in applications today —reduced complexity with increased security, reliability and manageability. By shipping their applications as appliances, software vendors can meet these customer requirements while also improving their operational effectiveness.

Deploying as a hardware appliance

In recent years, deploying enterprise software has changed dramatically. The days of shipping disks or downloading software to general-purpose servers is all but gone. Network integration, interoperability and a host of support issues have changed how software is delivered. More and more software vendors are turning to plug-and-play hardware-based appliances because they are more secure, easily maintained and built for application performance.

But building an appliance is no easy task. Specialized skills are needed to create the perfect appliance, test it, validate its performance and properly certify it for deployment. To achieve the full benefits of the hardware appliance model, its architecture must make efficient use of the network on which it resides. And once deployed, the appliance needs a secure update capability and an effective means to manage deployed appliances. For the vast majority of software companies, the fundamental problem is not having the expertise and dedicated resources needed to build and maintain a hardware-based deployment program.