If you spent more than a decade doing just one thing, you might get pretty proficient at it. That’s the case with NSI Software, according to customers, who say the company has been doggedly improving its software.
Robb Good, director of information systems at Sundt Construction in San Diego, says that when he installed NSI’s Double-Take in 2002, he was “a little surprised” how much bandwidth it used: It sometimes would take over the entire 1.5-megabit-per-second link from San Diego to a backup site in Tucson, Ariz. But he says the latest version is more efficient, and with bandwidth-throttling features enabled it now uses less than 15% of the connection. “It’s worked flawlessly,” he says.
NSI has also been quick to mend glitches, says Andy Bomboy, manager of network technology at hospitality company Hershey Entertainment & Resorts. Two years ago, a conflict between Double-Take and Symantec’s antivirus software caused one of the backup servers to freeze. Three weeks after alerting NSI to the problem, the company’s engineers had fixed it. “There’s always room for improvement, but they’ve made improvements along the way,” Bomboy says.
But NSI couldn’t get Double-Take to work for Dallas law firm Locke Liddell & Sapp, says Jeremy Newhouse, its manager of information-technology projects. The firm has separate e-mail administrator groups for its main offices, in Dallas and Houston. If a mail server failed in one, Newhouse wanted the other office’s servers to take over but maintain the original’s administrative rights. Even after NSI spent 40 hours reconfiguring the software on site, Newhouse claims, Double-Take still wouldn’t grant access to a remote administration group. “NSI never got it to work, period,” he says. Locke Liddell & Sapp chose XOsoft’s WANsyncHA replication software instead.
An NSI spokesman says the company told Locke Liddell & Sapp the configuration it wanted “would likely not work,” but he also insists Double-Take could have handled the setup.
Other NSI customers, meanwhile, say they’ve never encountered a problem with its products. Tom Bloom, computer systems manager at Texas A&M University, says Double-Take’s documentation for setup and configuration is excellent. “I have not called their tech support once,” he says. “The software just works.”
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Financials
Revenue, 2004 (est.): $48M
Revenue growth: 33% from 2003 to 2004
Funding to date: $60M
Investors
ABS Capital Partners, Dell, J&W Seligman & Co.
Major Partners
Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lakeview Technology, SunGard Data Systems
Other Major Customers
Financial: The Bank of New York, Grant Thornton, Liberty Mutual Insurance, State Street
Government: Indianapolis International Airport, New York City Dept. of Correction
Retail: Family Dollar Stores, JC Penney, Sears, Roebuck and Co.
Utilities: Covanta Energy, Xcel Energy
Education: Naval War College, University of Miami School of Law
Manufacturing: American Power Conversion (APC), Lyondell Chemical
1991
Founded in Hoboken, N.J.
2001
Receives $7M from ABS Capital Partners
2003
Launches replication software for Microsoft SQL Server
2004
Raises $15M in funding
2005
Opens sales office in Southboro, Mass.
Sources: Company reports, Thomson Gale (revenue estimate)