.FLYINGHEAD THE COMPUTING UNPLUGGED INTERVIEW
.TITLE The inside story of Sereniti, a new wireless router company
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY We recently had the opportunity to meet Wade Callison. Wade is bringing a new wireless router product to market and we thought it’d be interesting to go inside a new company and learn what goes into developing a product like a home network router.
.OTHER
We recently had the opportunity to meet Wade Callison. Wade is bringing a new wireless router product to market and we thought it’d be interesting to go inside a new company and learn what goes into developing a product like a home network router.
We here at Computing Unplugged were amused (we amuse easily), because at the time we first met Wade, the Joss Whedan movie Serenity was just coming out into theatres. As Firefly addicts, it took us a few conversational tries to understand that Serenity, the movie, and Sereniti, the hardware company, were different beasts. Fortunately, this discussion was about Sereniti, not Serenity. Don’t get me started about Wash!
.Q David
Please introduce yourself and explain your role at Sereniti.
.A Wade
My name is Wade Callison and I am the Vice President of Product and Program Management at Sereniti. My team is responsible for defining and designing products that will provide consumers with unprecedented capability, support and security for their home and Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) networks.
.Q David
So Sereniti is a post dot-bomb venture funded business. We haven’t seen too many of those recently. Can you tell us about your financing, mission, and the company’s direction?
.BREAK_EMAIL Want to know what makes Sereniti tick? Tap here.
.A Wade
We are indeed one of the new generation of start-ups. Sereniti’s mission is to provide consumers and SOHO customers with the same level of PC and networking support that the business world has enjoyed for decades. Internet technologies have brought the burden of managing technology into the home and we strive to make that as pain-free as possible.
At Sereniti we bring simplicity, security and support to home networks through our subscription-based service for the home and SOHO user. Sereniti provides an all-in-one bundle of networking hardware, storage, management software and whole-home technical support to simplify the user’s experience in the Digital Home. For home computer networks, Sereniti offers a menu of around-the-clock support services that are ideal for users who find themselves in the unintended role of supporting their home technology.
We are backed by premier venture capital investors Sevin Rosen Funds and Rho Ventures.
.Q David
You’ve told me you have a neat little router box. But it’s more than the typical router. What else is in it that we wouldn’t expect?
.A Wade
The Sereniti Smart Home Server is much more than a router. It’s is really the all-in-one hardware product that not only provides wired and wireless access in the home but also includes an 80Gb hard drive for backup, a USB print server and shared network attached storage (NAS).
By providing these capabilities in one device we greatly reduce the headaches of getting individual products to work together (and more importantly to continue to work together). Through remote upgrade capabilities, Sereniti will ensure that the device is always running on the latest firmware so consumers don’t have to worry about manual upgrades.
One of the biggest differentiators that our hardware brings to the home is zero-touch network backup. By connecting each PC to the Internet, our software automatically backs up the most important files (Desktop, My Documents, email, and Favorites) and sets a daily schedule to capture incremental changes. This is done automatically and, unless the user wants to define a different backup schedule or change the folders to be backed up, no intervention is required to maintain a complete backup of all your irreplaceable data in the home.
.Q David
Can you describe the software component of your offering?
.A Wade
There are three software components in our offering: the Sereniti Command Center, Sereniti Security Suite and the Sereniti Knowledge Base.
The Sereniti Command Center is the dashboard and management portal through which users can manage their home network and all of the PCs in the home. It includes functionality to manage the common PC maintenance functions, self-healing and user-initiated troubleshooting, network configuration, and all file and printer sharing.
One of the unique features of the Command Center is the Whole Home Security View that provides, in a single screen, the security state of every PC in the home. From this view, users can see if antivirus, antispyware and firewall programs are installed/activated/up-to-date. And, should a PC in the network need fixing, with a single-click most issues can be resolved without having to go to that PC.
The second software component is the Sereniti Security Suite. Sereniti has partnered with an award-winning security software company to offer antivirus, antispyware and firewall protection for up to four computers in the home. One of the major issues facing the home network is that consumers dramatically over-estimate the security of their PCs.
A study by AOL and the National Cyber Security Alliance shows that while 80% of consumers state that their PCs in the home are protected by up-to-date security applications, 67% of these either have no antivirus protection or have not updated their protection within the past week. While many consumers install an antivirus application (typically an evaluation copy that is bundled with the PC), they fail to maintain the service and can suffer long lapses in protection or worse, a catastrophic infection. The Sereniti Security Suite provides a uniform layer of protection across the home and ensures that the consumer has the latest virus and spyware definitions.
The last software component, the Sereniti Knowledge Base, is a comprehensive help system for those consumers that are eager to learn how to solve problems themselves but just lack the experience and technical know-how. Sereniti Knowledge Base is provided as a fully searchable Web-based portal and as a PC-resident help system (for times when connectivity issues hinder Web access). The knowledge base is updated daily with new help articles and guided videos.
.Q David
I understand your claim that service is a big part of what you’re selling. What services are you offering?
.A Wade
The Sereniti Smart Home Networking Service is "bumper-to-bumper" support for the home network. We handle all antivirus and antispyware definition updates, updates to the firmware of the Smart Home Server, and our customer care center is available 24×7 to assist with any issue our customers may face with their home network.
Because of our advanced diagnostic software, we are able to resolve a vast majority of our customer issues within 20 minutes. This is extremely impressive when you consider that support calls like this with other companies can routinely run two and three times that duration.
We understand that our customers don’t want to sit on the phone going over the basic environment questions and want to get to the issue at hand. We are able to do that and we enjoy a very high satisfaction rating from our customers because of our dedication to using the technology effectively to simplify their lives.
.Q David
So you don’t have antivirus and spyware at the box, but on the PC? I’d think it’d be very valuable to keep viruses and spyware outside the firewall. Aren’t you missing a real opportunity here?
.A Wade
In a world that is increasingly mobile, it is not sufficient to place the protections at the edge of the network. And, even if you did that, you would also need to have them on the PC so that you are protected from viruses transmitted by CDs, floppy disks or flash drives. In addition, network-based protections don’t secure you when you are at a hotel, the local coffee shop or Internet hotspot. Sereniti provides up to four copies of our Sereniti Security Suite with our service to ensure that each PC on the network has the latest antivirus and antispyware protection.
.Q David
Your customer service and technical support is offshore. There’s a big backlash here in the U.S. against offshore support. While I love Dell machines, I know I better not need any customer support or service because their offshore support is dreadful. To horribly mix metaphors, as a startup, isn’t this a big strike against you right out of the gate?
.A Wade
Not at all. Our business model is to provide best-in-class service beyond what consumers can currently find today. Equipment manufacturers make money from selling hardware and look for every way to reduce the cost of support. At Sereniti, since customers are buying our service, we place great emphasis on ensuring that our service is one that consumers will rave about (and they do).
In that regard you can liken Sereniti to a home security company that installs sophisticated hardware in the home to enable their service. In much the same way, our Sereniti Smart Home server enables us to provide unparalleled customer support.
What’s unique about our support solution is we’ve taken a hybrid approach to delivering service. At a transactional level, the agents offshore are providing service and interacting with end users. They are specially trained to provide knowledge based solutions; not scripted technical support that quickly goes down hill the first time a subscriber deviates from the script.
In addition, this team is supported by a very robust U.S.-based operations staff at Sereniti that has direct situational awareness of the support environment and can intervene at any point to provide additional guidance and assistance. This allows us to keep our prices low while ensuring that we have not sacrificed our most valuable asset: our relationship with our customers.
.Q David
We’re all very familiar with Netgear, Linksys, and D-Link. Why would we want to go with an unknown box provider when there are excellent solutions at excellent prices from excellent providers?
.A Wade
As you point out, there are some good router manufacturers on the market that make products for the do-it-yourself PC user. But, the Sereniti service is a complete, all-in-one service for the user who can’t or doesn’t want to work through all the technology and security issues involved in deploying and maintaining a reliable, secure home network. We happen to deliver a unique, all-in-one hardware device as part of the service but we certainly don’t view ourselves as competing with the router manufacturers of the world.
But don’t get me wrong — we are very proud of our device. What we have done at Sereniti is to build an all-in-one product that includes a router, 802.11G wireless, firewall, parental controls, backup, network attached storage and a printer server. Then we provide the consumer with service, not just for the router, but for all of their home networking needs.
And if you compare the cost of Sereniti’s all-in-one service versus buying all the individual parts — including security software, network attached storage, print server and the routing functions — it’s actually far more cost effective to purchase the Sereniti service.
.Q David
Let’s ask the same question, but this time with software. You’re trying to provide antivirus, antispyware, and firewall software solutions, yet each of these are huge product undertakings with massive databases and analysis required. How can you possibly keep up with the Symantecs of the world — and provide the boxes as well.
.A Wade
You are exactly right. We have partnered with an award-winning security software company, Authentium, that specializes in providing security solutions for distribution by service providers. They are able to focus on maintaining the virus and spyware definitions and maintaining the engines. Through our partnership, our customers get an award-winning security suite for all the PCs in their home at a fraction of the price of purchasing individual copies.
.Q David
It seems a little scary that your support offer involves opening PCs on the network to your support people — especially when they’re outside the country. Isn’t this wildly risky?
.A Wade
As part of the Sereniti support platform, we have the ability to initiate a one-time, fully encrypted remote control session of a user’s PCs. This session is only established when a customer requests that we fix the issue for them as opposed to walking them through the fix. The session must be approved by users and the user is able to watch all activities being performed on their behalf.
In addition, the customer has full control to end the session at any point. When the session is complete, the application fully removes itself from the customer’s hard drive ensuring that a new session cannot be established unless the customer again provides explicit permission.
.Q David
You’re offering an insurance policy of some sort with this. Can you tell us about it?
.A Wade
Sereniti offers a zero-deductible insurance policy for victims of identity theft that covers up to $25,000 in expenses for repairing credit records as well as lost wages. On average, identity theft victims suffer as many as 175 hours lost from work in their efforts to repair credit records.
In addition, Sereniti offers a zero-deductible $1,000 policy that covers damage to computers and software as the result of viruses. Both policies are underwritten by American International Group, Inc. (AIG), the world’s leading international insurance and financial services organization.
The policies are included at no additional cost with a subscription to the Sereniti service and provide coverage to all customers who install Sereniti’s Security Software Suite.
Wade has a lot of knowledge on the topic of identity theft. We’ve done another complete interview with him on that scary subject. We’ll be running that interview in a future issue. Stay tuned.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Sereniti, visit http://www.sereniti.com.
For more information on Serenity, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_(film).
For more information on Firefly, visit http://www.fireflywiki.org.
For more information on Wash, visit http://www.fireflywiki.org/Firefly/Wash.
.END_SIDEBAR
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