WG, PG,...

Well, happy to oblige. We're a six person company located in Sydney, Australia.

Initially, like many of the small vendors we worked from home during the bootstrapping phase of the business. Now, we have a fully equipped office located in the central business district (just over a pub, too! Result!).

There are 4 owner/directors in the business, which we established a good few years ago now. We take on contractors here and there when we have gaps to fill. (And, chances are we'll be looking for a good IT Support technician in Sydney during February - Windows, Small business server, exchange - email me if you're in Sydney and looking for work !)

Our primary business is software development and IT Support, and we have clients all over Sydney and a few interstate/overseas. You can see our (out of date) IT Support website here: http://www.tallemu.com.au

While we've been developing Online Armor, we've also developed a complete CRM system for the wine industry, a micropayment system and several customisations to existing third party CRM systems. Other projects have included an as-yet unreleased Linux version of MS Exchange (this is one of my personal favorites as it integrates with MS Outlook, so is transparent for the end user), an email to SMS gateway (MS Exchange) , two-way SMS chat tools, various minor CRM and data extraction projects, including a cool data-extraction tool which takes data from multiple site databases, copies it centrally and then reports on it. We're also going to be releasing a free tool called Magpie - hopefully by end of January, although Kernel mode OA comes first.

My role in the business - well, on paper I'm the CEO - but in a business our size, all of the partners take on responsibility as needed. In reality, I look after software development (although I don't do much actual hands on stuff myself any more) what that really means is I look after projects, system design, customer care work ( including Online Armor) and I also do a bit of the sales work as well.

We've invested a large amount of time and money in Online Armor. Obviously, since it's only been out for a year and we've been constantly improving it, we're nowhere near recovering our costs yet. We're in it for the long haul and have a large development plan for our product line in the future. At the moment, we have a Firewall and Kernel mode version of OA with our beta test team. Testing of the firewall so far has seen good results overall - so we should have a nice product to deliver very soon... and then, we start again

Hope that fills you in some.

 

Sorry Baldrick. I thought you might have been trying to chastise me for not knowing anything about ProSecurity. The reason I stated that I didn't know anything about ProSecurity was to head off any claim that I was recommending Online-Armor over ProSecurity because I honestly know nothing of the latter.

 

Hi Mike

Thanks for that...very interesting and useful to know for us out there looking to purchase products (and not what I had expected which just goes to show that this sort of information is useful). I hope that other suppliers do the same as it is not just about the product but also about those who supply it.

Wishing you a Peaceful & Prosperous 2007

 

Hi Dallen
No problem...my apologies as obviously something in the way I wrote my post led you to that conclusion. As you surmised that was not my intent.

Mike Nash's information is very interesting and I might well have a look at Online Armor (it was not on my radar at all) to see if it might fit the bill as a potential PG replacement...currently in the running are ProSecurity & SSM...but it is early days yet.

 

If you're looking for something that will replace PG completely, OA isn't quite there yet. With our upcoming Kernel mode release, however, that's a different story.

 

Thanks Mike for the info provided... Like Pete, I would appreciate now if the developper of Prosecurity can give us the same kind of info!

Atomas31

 

I have found that transparency is a good thing. When a company has nothing to hide and remains open with their customers, people are less likely to be mislead and consequently to be hurt. If you go back to the days of DCS, customers wanted to know what was going on, and DCS did everything they could not to tell them.

Mike Nash seems the opposite. Just look at the above posting. I certainly am not the authority on Online-Armor, or Mike Nash for that matter, because I only recently resumed following them. However, most people that know anything about my dealings in this forum know that I am hyper-critical. Online-Armor is a quality product and is only going to improve. I am confident in saying this because everything that I've discovered about the software and the developer behind the software is nothing but top-notch.

Even I have found nothing to criticize about Mr. Nash or his company. Regarding his software on the other hand, I have voiced a couple of things I would like to see tweaked.
The key is that Mike listens and takes action.

 

Found this:

http://www.softplatz.com/Info/ISecSoft-Inc.html

 

This morning I spent some time perusing ProSecurity's forum. It looks like they are having minor issues (i.e. large fonts users experience unusual GUI problems), but nothing out of the ordinary. I will have to download it so I can compare and contrast it with Online-Armor...sounds like an interesting thread (ProSecurity vs. Online-Armor).