From the first keystroke, the design concept for our policy based systems has been based on the conviction that IP network services can be automated, provisioned and administered in precise and adaptable conformance to the end-user's needs.

The result has been a legacy of solutions that deliver policy-enabled control and management features distinguished by virtue of their simplicity, security, integration and automation from alternative, legacy solutions.

OverDrive, LineSider's flagship product has been under development for over 5 years. Generation after generation of technology improvements have delivered a system that implements the type of 'Policy Continuum' that is called for in the most current and forward-looking strategies for next-generation control of infrastructure services

LineSider's intellectual property is currently protected by 7 existing patents on policy management and control and LineSider currently has over 15 pending patents under review for current and future technology advancements.

OverDrive is based on the simple premise...

Wouldn't it be nice to capture the specific needs of the business, in the actual language of the business (not some technical jargon) and have that request be automatically translated into all the necessary underlying network services and configurations required to initiate the request across the network fabric without having to touch a device command line or know any of the technical details about the network?

Sounds good, but is it possible? With OverDrive, LineSider's new policy-based control and management solution it is!

OverDrive works at the intersection of three primary domains within a typical enterprise network infrastructure: the user domain, the application domain and the network domain. By using policy to control the underlying network services and relations between these domains OverDrive can in effect virtualize the network based on defined business rules.

In this relationship, OverDrive policies bring together and augment existing domain related technologies and approaches through a common higher-level policy driven control mechanism. OverDrive is not a replacement for existing network management solutions, or application monitoring or management solutions, or even the user based control systems such as LDAP or RADIUS. OverDrive works with these technologies and provides a powerful, fully automated policy framework that allows IT organizations to save enormous amounts of time by controlling the intersection of these three domains through the use of top-down policy.

As a result of this policy-based approach, OverDrive is able to automate, control and manage the intersection of these domains, OverDrive is able to offer valuable compliance features through the persistent mapping of user access to application level resources based on policy defined rules. Additionally, OverDrive is able to 'virtualize' the underlying network services and devices to defined application resources based on defined policies. This same level of policy-driven control allows OverDrive to define and control user-based network access leveraging our strong integration with Microsoft's Active Directory and other LDAP sources.

The true power of OverDrive, however, exists in its ability to define and control multiple deployed network services in parallel and in real-time through a fully abstracted layer of policy. In the following example, a business desires to provide access to the new CRM system for all members of the sales team. With OverDrive, that request is captured in that level of business language (not technical jargon) as a simple policy request.

That request then gets interpreted by OverDrive's sophisticated service engine in order to break the policy request down into all the necessary independent services that need to be established in order to allow all members of the sales team access to the new server. Once OverDrive determines the specific services that are required to be constructed across the network, the engine is then able to determine exactly what devices should be modified in order to bring the new services on-line. Once OverDrive has identified these devices, the policy engine checks to ensure that the selected devices can support the services to be deployed. If some devices are unable to support the desired services, OverDrive looks for other paths and combinations of solutions to establish the desired service. If the service cannot be established, OverDrive will notify the administrator that the policy is unsound.

If OverDrive is able to establish the appropriate services across the network in order to support the policy request, then OverDrive begins the process of building the necessary configuration modifications for each of the selected devices. As the configuration updates are assembled for each device, OverDrive pushes these changes out to intelligent OverDrive software agents that are managing the selected devices and those agents then take the configuration updates and dynamically load them onto the devices in real-time, while providing instantaneous feedback to the OverDrive administrative interface as to the status of the services and devices.

Only with OverDrive can multiple network services be dynamically initiated across multiple devices in parallel through the use of business policy. This level of automation saves the enterprise an unprecedented amount of operational time and labor as network engineers no longer need to spend hours on the command line building services in a serial fashion and can now spend time working on design and other more strategic initiatives. OverDrive has been proven to save up to 80% off the total cost of ownership for network operational infrastructures through this policy-based control and management process.