We develop and support our products
Tactical Software is not a reseller. We make what we sell.
We've been in the redirector business for over ten years
A redirector can be prototyped in a weekend. One that works with real applications and real servers takes years to get right. Why? Start with undocumented behavior in Windows, various ways applications use (and abuse) modems and serial ports, network interactions and server firmware variations. These are all solvable problems, but it takes years of experience with hundreds of customers' real-world applications to get a redirector right. We have been there, we know.
We don't sell hardware
You won't find serial servers or modem servers for sale on our web site. There are certainly many good server products, but since day one we have taken the customer's side when it comes to identifying best choices in equipment for specific applications. We think it is important for you to be able to choose the right equipment, and to change your mind if necessary. Our software doesn't lock you in.
We don't sell other software products
We make and sell a single product line. We have been focused on redirector software from day one. We are the developers with a consistent engineering team throughout our product history. We have produced one quality product line designed and developed from the ground up with our own market research through direct contact with our customers. You won't find anyone that knows redirector technology better.
We are independent of server manufacturers
We frequently work with all the major manufacturers of device servers, and we have worked with dozens of others. We mention some manufacturer names on our web site, but we don't generally take sides because we know there is no single best server manufacturer that covers all applications. Tell us what you're trying to do, and we'll be happy to give you suggestions on what you might consider for hardware.
We don't copy, we innovate
We are the leader in our field and we realize that success means imitation. There are redirector products that have come on the scene in recent years that have attempted to follow our lead. We've dealt with it successfully for years. But it is unfortunate when a customer deals with an imitation. We have millions invested in our technology, and in the long run it shows in the results you see with your application.
Redirectors are our only business
We only do well when our software works. We don't offer redirector software as a sideline to a hardware product line. We're not a division of a larger company. Our software engineers don't compete for budget with a hardware group. We invest our R&D budget only in our software products.
We support and improve public protocols
From day one, we have been committed to using public TCP protocols. Fortunately, most server manufacturers have also realized that customers deserve the choice that these protocols help ensure. Back in 2000, when the RFC 2217 COM Port Control needed a final push, we supported it across our product line, worked with Cisco to clear up remaining ambiguities, and began providing free server-side source code to server manufacturers. Over and over, public protocols have proven to be up to the task in real applications, while proprietary protocols mainly just lock customers in to a hardware vendor.
We help you with real-world applications
We do provide free trial licenses for our products, but we don't sit back and assume you want to be left alone to sort out the rest of the application issues. If you ask for help, we can offer more than sympathy. We can provide real guidance, even on the tough problems that take a trace log analysis or network packet trace to figure out. If the finger starts pointing to other software or hardware, we stay involved and use our contacts with major vendors. We provide links to third party debug tools and instructions for using them to uncover and diagnose problems.
When we say driver, we mean driver
If you're told a redirector is a driver, you should be able to find it in the Device Manager, right? That's where you'll find ours. (Make sure you set your View to Show Hidden Devices.) And what we're doing at the driver level also includes things like encryption support and interfacing to TCP/IP networking below the user level of the Windows TCP/IP stack.
We know threads, multiprocessor systems and scaling
Operating systems use threads to make the most of a computer, especially if it's a multiprocessor machine. Inside our redirectors, we use threads to scale up without bogging down. Of course, since our redirectors support up to 4,096 virtual COM ports, we test it and find out how far you can actually push certain machine configurations. Our goal is simple: if a large application isn't running well on a given computer, we don't want the problem to be us.
We actually do QA and field testing
Ever wonder how a software vendor can come out with a release every few weeks? Or with no announced beta program? Actually, if you're in the software business you know how, and if you're a customer using that software you find out the hard way. Here at Tactical, we have a QA lab with a great track record of finding problems before customers do. Our QA testing for a release can involve over 10 million connections using multiple products, 32 and 64-bit machines and nine versions of Windows. Our releases go through a beta testing cycle. It's good software development practice and it's good for our customers.
We invest in documentation
Our products come with professional-grade user guides that have hints for a quick start plus in-depth details you may need to know. On top of that, tech notes on our web site and our support FAQ talk about specific issues involved in some kinds of applications or hardware. Not everybody has to read it all, but we make the investment in documentation so that every customer gets the information at the level they require.
We synchronize all of our products to our latest technology
Each time we make a release, we propagate the revised code base into all products and do a QA and release engineering pass for everything. We don't offer products that lag behind.
We don't try to make it sound like it's always easy
If you know enterprise IT, you know why we approach it this way. The truth is, a redirector is one link in a complex chain of software, networking and hardware. What's hard for you, someone else may never hit. When you are facing a problem unique to you, we're here.
We don't make a big deal of benchmark numbers
We have some of the industry's best performance numbers. (We know because we check.) But we don't make a big deal out of it. Why? Because we know the performance of your application will also depend on the client computer load, network design, server choices and other issues. We focus on getting our part of the job done right.
We don't create a marketing cloud of self-promotion
You won't find our products through multiple door pages and domain names that lead to the same information. You also won't find our marketing information on informational sites such as Wikipedia. What you will find is authoritative information about our products and applications on www.tacticalsoftware.com (for our Windows-based products) and www.ttyredirector.com (for our Linux-based products).
We don't try to make our case with software patents
We don't use patents to convince customers to accept proprietary technology and become locked into to a server product line. From its inception, Tactical has been committed to developing technology that lets customers stick with public protocols and choose the equipment that best meets their needs.
