If you are a managed solutions provider, RMM software probably is high on your radar since VARs are constantly asking you about which platform you use and what features it provides.

Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools are critical to any IT Service Provider who wants to create recurring revenue through managed services or take their managed services business to the next level. It’s no surprise that every MSP needs a PSA and RMM platform to succeed. But which platform to choose and how to choose it? Amongst the plethora of available RMM tools powered by N-able, Kaseya, LPI, Hounddog, IT control suite… the list seems endless and the choice not so easy. However, there are some key criterions to select the right platform for your service delivery needs.

Comparing some of the features might be a good way to start. Agent based vs. probe based, hosted or on-premise, support for security or back up services? Does the vendor offer operations and help desk services? Which server/desktop platforms can the tools monitor and manage? Does it integrate well with your current PSA system? It would be best to conduct a comprehensive survey with your current VAR community to understand their priorities and expectations from an RMM tool.

An industry research on RMM software was conducted online by GFI Max during June of 2009. The survey interviewed over 200 IT Support Companies and Managed Service providers about their satisfaction with the installation and running of RMM software, the necessary training, the pricing models and return on investment. The most valued features of RMM, according to respondents were server Monitoring, LAN & Windows monitoring, patch management and remote support. Top reasons for using RMM are to offer a faster fix response time and preventative maintenance. Also, RMM tools are used for preventive maintenance, cost savings and improving business margins. These should be useful data points to find the right RMM platform to partner with.

The detailed survey report on the usefulness of RMM tools for VARs  can be downloaded here.

Happy New Year to all!

Continuing from my previous post on the IT Infrastructure landscape in 2010, I will drill a little deeper into three specific areas which are going to clinch limelight this year. I added WAN Landscape in here as an offshoot of cloud computing and SaaS. If critical applications are hosted in the cloud, across an internet connection rather than through a private data center, the need to optimize delivery is clear to distinguish them from other web content and applications. Also many of these applications will be content rich, real time and bandwidth intensive as the use of Web 2.0 and gaming applications become widely utilized.

Looking at Virtualization: IDC predicts this market to grow at 26% in 2010. Flexible server pools will replace dedicated computers. With enterprise IT departments become increasingly concerned about their electric bills, virtualization offers one way to “green” the server room by consolidating the functions of several servers into a single machine. In many cases, a virtual machine running means one less physical machine in operation. Also, A GUI based, “single pane of glass” is the best solution to configure, manage, and maintain all hardware in the pool.  Administrators can move and/or balance loads, deploy server images to new hardware (local or remote), or even shut down unused resources for power savings. Virtualization of I/O is also crucial to make failover and high availability a part of any SLA.

To understand the WAN landscape, let’s review Gartner’s statistics on the worldwide market for application acceleration equipment. A compound annual growth rate of 12.22% with revenue of $4.27 billion in 2014 is forecasted by the research firm. There surely was a slump in 2009 for both buyers and suppliers but signs of greater spending are projected for the future. So while 2010 is going to be the ‘realization year’ for the cloud, WAN optimization is going to be the fundamental component for the successful delivery of cloud services. With this, enterprises will need to embrace the cost and scalability benefits of cloud computing while simultaneously continuing to meet employee standards for access and application performance. All of this means that internet and WAN are going to take new levels of importance and the most successful WAN optimization solution will utilize virtualization technologies.

Forrester predicts 2010 to be a critical year for IT infrastructure management operations. Seems like enterprises will be heading towards recovery in this post recession era with new project initiatives.

Some of the top priorities of CIOs in 2009 according to Gartner were business process improvement, reducing enterprise costs and increasing enterprise workforce effectiveness. The top few technologies which reined ground were servers and storage technologies, collaboration technologies, networking, voice and data communications, security technologies and technical infrastructure.

Some of the top priorities in 2010 will be:

• Consolidation, virtualization, automation and cloud
• Intelligence around infrastructure management with focus on KPIs and other metrics to monitor and improve performance
• Transformation from tech-silos to service delivery organizations with focus on ITIL frameworks

Everest Group predicts that the Remote Infrastructure Management operations market is expected to touch $8.6B in 2010 while The Yankee Group predicts the managed services market to grow to $10B by end of next year. McKinsey states that between 2008 and 2010 the non labor costs are going to fall by almost 54% as a result of emerging technologies such as virtualization.

In 2010, as the economy comes out of recession, SMBs will be more willing to spend again, but only for solutions that will provide demonstrable bottom and/or top line business benefits. SMBs will spend only if they believe that the investment will help them operate more profitably, grow revenues, increase productivity, save money or gain time-to-market advantages. SMBs are also evaluating and making trade-offs in areas that offer strategic, long-term advantages vs. those that meet more urgent, short-term needs. In many cases, IT investments must also be weighed against requirements for other core goods and services essential to the business.

For the foreseeable future, SMBs’ will continue to take a hybrid approach to technology, combining on-premise and public cloud-based solutions to satisfy business requirements. In 2010, vendors will offer a greater range of targeted solutions for hybrid environment requirements to spur SMB interest and traction. Virtual desktops, business continuity/disaster recovery, on-demand computing and storage will feature prominently in vendors’ lineups

According to the recent survey by Rackspace, IT managers face daily challenges in controlling the environment that could drive companies to consider managed hosting and cloud computing alternatives. The survey found that about one-third of the IT staff time is consumed with server management tasks and close to 60% of the 500 IT managers polled cited the hassle of managing servers. This basically means that a huge chunk of time and resources are spent on non-core/ contextual activities ‘de-focusing’ the enterprise from their core/mission critical objectives. This leaves them with absolutely no time for strategic/value-added activities resulting in lost revenues and market shares. When asked if managed hosting or cloud computing can address these challenges, about one-third of the companies expected to outsource their services to a hosting company in the next 2-5 years.

Some of the biggest challenges for SMBs today include:

• Increased messaging: maintaining email functionality, data retention, and protection against spam, phishing, viruses, worms, spyware and other threats.
• DNS services getting increasingly complex: DNS records configuration and management, administering multiple domains, vulnerabilities from DNS-based buffer overflow attacks.
• Storage, data backup and data recovery requirements are growing: continuous data protection, incremental backup, and off-site data management (SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, CRM).
• Network and security management will continue to command more attention—and resources: firewall configuration, scanning for malware, check sum changes in software on the server, bandwidth and port monitoring to assess ongoing risks.
• Disaster recovery and business continuity are essential, but rarely planned out thoroughly in advance: protecting against loss of sensitive data and network connectivity, downtime, reboots, service failures, power outages and other disruptions.

Managed hosting helps address most of these challenges by providing extensive monitoring,enhanced security, personalized support with cost savings and guaranteed resources to address complex needs. On the flip side however, hosting can become expensive if you are using managed hosting for fairly basic/simple hosting. Sometimes, you might not have complete control of hosting functionality since you are handing over all the controls. So you got to assess your needs and priorities. It however cannot be denied that managed hosting is leading the charge.

Saying that your business should never, never, ever use cloud-based applications instead of desktop or network/server based ones is about as ridiculous as saying that cloud-based applications will eventually replace IT completely. An article titled ‘cloud computation is for suckers’ rallies on the follies of the cloud talking about flaky performance, dependency problems, cyber terrorism and the likes.

There might be some truth about performance issues because even with a 30 MBPS service you’ll get flaky performance from most online apps, especially if they’re popular. Always remember that your online speed is only as good as the speed at which data is coming at you: The application server may be swamped, and the various nodes along the route could become clogged, too. Nothing is ever as fast as the machine sitting on top of (or beneath) your own desk.

Despite the backlash, some basic facts cannot be hidden and that is the clouds are here to stay! I am not sure if I’ve mentioned this statistic before? Gartner predicts that by 2012 80 percent of Fortune 1000 enterprises will pay for some cloud-computing service, while 30 percent of them will pay for cloud-computing infrastructure. While the technology has its fair share of drawbacks such as privacy and security concerns, an undeniable silver lining is currently turning skeptics into enthusiasts.

A significant section of the technology community believes that there is a compelling case for clouds for business reasons and otherwise. Let’s look at social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube…the list is quite big. Utilizing a cloud service for communications would definitely be a cheaper alternative than a private solution because it is cheaper to connect to a hub or a network once rather than have multiple point to point connections. Cloud computing is a way to provide an application at low startup costs in exchange for revenue over time – whether through advertising, in the case of Google’s apps, or through a subscription model. Yes, it is very much “renting” rather than “owning,” but that can very well make financial sense in many cases.

Then there is this whole ‘more for less’ philosophy when shared resources are used on demand/intermittently. You’re no longer tethered to a single computer/network. You change workstations and your existing applications will follow you through the cloud. Moving to a portable device? Your applications will be available there. Desktop networking can destroy all your data when your hard disk crashes. But when your data’s out there in the cloud, it is still accessible and offers you an unlimited amount of storage. It’s likely that at some point any device that can access the Internet will be able to run a cloud-based application. Application services are available, independent of the user devices and network interfaces.

Large part of the web community has been talking about the unexpected downtime that occurred in Rackspace’s cloud today. Some reports say that the service was degraded while others report an outage in the Dallas NOC. T-Mobile experienced a similar hiccup a few days back with some 2 million users left without any service! Customers are affected and cursing the cloud, although it does not seem to be all that of a ‘cloud problem’.

While large companies continue to enhance their hosting capabilities and service offerings, there continues to be looming issues on downtime, security breaches and the like. Although these companies did a decent job of incident handling, provided regular updates to their customers on the status and a hotline for customers to call, the moot questions still continues to linger in customer’s minds. Is their investment in cloud worthwhile after all? There remains a gap in expectations and some level of ambiguity over what cloud computing has to offer?

As companies build their cloud brand, it is then very essential to do some basic groundwork to see if they are ready to take off just yet. Unfortunately most companies venture out and then do a SWOT analysis in the midst of a cloud storm. While on the customer’s side, especially for paying customers there is an expectation of backup and resiliency when all of the data and device is under the control of the vendor.

One way to resolve this nervousness is to amplify the brand in the event of such outages. The larger the outage the more feverishly teams work to ensure that it is resolved. What’s more there is root cause analysis to understand why it happened and corrective action to resolve. There is a lot of visibility with the analyst, bloggers, PR and customer communities and this can be used as a chance to steer clear and strengthen the brand.

Although there is less human interaction in cloud architectures, the processes are not automatically all that more stringent. So a lot of guidelines and policies need to be laid down explicitly as best practices with complete encryption details and mechanisms of segmentation between tenants in any location where multi tenancy exists.

Needless to say there is a need to manage innovation with operation excellence. Operational excellence in this context would mean scalability, uptime, availability and ease of use. This needless to say must be exceptional to compete in the cloud services market.

Gartner in its most recent press release press release announces the top 10 hot technologies for 2010. These are technologies which are going to have a significant impact on enterprises in the next 3 years. Leading the charts are cloud computing followed by reshaping/transforming datacenters, security/activity monitoring, virtualization and many more. Note that I’ve only mentioned technologies where NetEnrich is a player and is geared up to make a big impact by entering the market at the right time.

Security and monitoring have always been one of our primary areas of focus both for our enterprise customers and managed service partners. With investments in advanced monitoring tools and home grown technology, we are able to provide a range of monitoring and alerting services for all devices, applications and platforms. The most elemental benefit for datacenter service providers has been our ability to provide 100% security and complete transparency for audit controls. NetEnrich has also initiated Datacenter Transformation as a practice area to help service providers add a layer of hosted solutions over providing rackspace for devices.

Another right time move is NetEnrich’s entry into the world of cloud computing and virtualization. I guess at this point, everyone is riding the hype cycle on cloud-based services and now that Gartner rates it as no 1, there’s definitely going to be a bigger buzz about it. NetEnrich was already a player in this space with its offerings for managing a complex SaaS hosted environment for a hi-tech internet security provider. With this experience and more, it is ready to launch similar cloud based offerings for IT infrastructure, applications and platforms for customers hosted in datacenters. More to follow…

Although cloud computing is going through the initial evolutionary steps, analyst houses such as Forrester and Gartner predict a spurt in demand for cloud based services by as early as 2012. Clearly, businesses are evaluating the model and contemplating a shift without compromising basic security and regulatory constraints.

Cloud computing represents a convergence of several IT drivers and offers cost-effective solutions to key business demands. For example, clouds provide businesses with the agility required to move quickly in highly competitive business environments. This allows organizations to activate and retire resources as needed, dynamically update infrastructure elements, and move workloads to improve efficiency without having to worry about creating new infrastructures for each new application.

Organizations want to take advantage of several cost benefits provided by cloud computing. These include the price/performance offered by readily-available, commodity-grade computers, the ability to mitigate skyrocketing data center development and operational costs and utilizing a shared infrastructure rather than creating new platforms on an application-by-application basis

While enterprises gear up to demand services from the cloud, NetEnrich gears up to establish a robust value proposition to capture a share of this burgeoning market.

Cost Factor: NetEnrich’s whole shared ITaaS (IT as a Service) model from the cloud is definitely a lucrative alternative to traditional on-premise delivery. Enterprises today are expanding globally and vying for operational efficiency. There is a movement about doing more with less due to trimmed budgets and rising resource/maintenance costs. Our cloud based shared service delivery framework provides the much needed operational efficiency since the same resources are now shared by multiple clients without shortchanging the basic security, regulatory requirements, compliance issues, functionalities and critical enterprise considerations.

Trust Factor: Why would you choose a particular vendor and what are our strengths and weaknesses? Do we even have a long term road map so you know you’re betting on the right long-term strategy for your business? NetEnrich has had an eloquent history in delivering world class enterprise solutions to large enterprise customers. Our technology has been a unique differentiator and our backbone to provide advanced functionalities and is now geared up to offer similar services ‘from the cloud’. The Virtual Private Management Gateway appliance is installed in the customer’s premises to ensure complete security and transparency during service delivery.

Industry analysts including Gartner and Forrester are early proponents of cloud computing and its potential. Several trends are emerging that will enable enterprises to make good use of cloud computing, such as shared, virtualized and automated IT architectures. However, the introduction of cloud-enabled application platforms will certainly accelerate cloud adoption among businesses of all sizes.

Clearly, there seems to be a lot of buzz about cloud computing lately: What it is and what it is not. Another technology fad or probably an entirely new exciting paradigm in IT service delivery. Whatever the definition may be, I think we need to demystify the terminology and understand that the world of IT delivery is moving away from the conventional on-premise model. Cloud computing opens up an entirely new IT delivery path which provides a wholly new alternative to acquiring software, platforms and IT infrastructure as your business grows. Services are now accessed over the web and accessed on demand from any location.

Gartner defines cloud computing as “a style of computing in which massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided ‘as a service’ using Internet technologies to multiple external customers.” Beyond the Gartner definition, clouds are marked by self-service interfaces that let customers acquire resources at any time and get rid of them the instant they are no longer needed.

Public vs. Private Cloud

A public cloud is a service that anyone can tap into with a network connection and a credit card. Public clouds are shared infrastructures with pay-as-you-go economics and are easily accessible, multitenant virtualized infrastructures that are managed via a self-service portal.

A private cloud attempts to mimic the delivery models of public cloud vendors but does so entirely within the firewall for the benefit of an enterprise’s users. A private cloud would be highly virtualized, stringing together mass quantities of IT infrastructure into one or a few easily managed logical resource pools.

To give you an idea about the growth magnitude of cloud services, here are some statistics:

By 2011, early technology adopters will forgo capital expenditures and instead purchase 40 percent of their IT infrastructure as a service,” states Gartner Group. “Increased high-speed bandwidth makes it practical to locate infrastructure at other sites and still receive the same response times.

By 2013, 12 percent of world software market will be Internet based forms of SaaS and cloud computing, according to Merrill Lynch.

Some of the most immediate and obvious benefits of cloud based services are low start up costs, low costs for sporadic use, ease of management, complete scalability, device and location independence and rapid incremental innovation.

Despite these immediate advantages, the cloud phenomenon is still new and not time tested. There are some concerns about the reliability and security of data and about the limitations of service offerings from the cloud. Is it the best fit for your business processes? What is the total cost of ownership pattern? What are the various security risks associated when transiting to a cloud based network? And how can NetEnrich help?

Organizations are seriously hindered in managing their IT Infrastructure for optimal CAPEX and OPEX by their inability to answer the most basic questions about IT infrastructure resource usage. This inability to identify and monitor resource usage leads to a number of problems.

System downtime increases due to unanticipated resource constraints. Even before that application performance may suffer as the applications begin to run short of system resources. Administrative overhead increases as staff scramble find, deploy, and reallocate resources. Meanwhile the organization’s work is being disrupted.

Capacity management addresses the entire end to-end IT infrastructure of servers, switches, various appliances, network bandwidth, and applications. Effective capacity management must keep pace with the growth of all the elements of the IT infrastructure. It also must take into account business and market factors that can impact infrastructure performance and availability

What are tools available for successful capacity management.

What are some of the most critical implementations in running smooth IT infrastructure operations? Datacenter TCO, security management, IT governance, IT service management, server utilization and consolidation, custom applications, help desk, storage consolidation and IT outsourcing?

Server utilization, power consumption, and application uptime appear on many IT dashboards. While these are certainly important, what really matters is how the IT infrastructure supports the business goals. Business owners care about:

• Availability - can my users access the applications they need?
• Performance - does the application deliver an acceptable response time?
• Data accuracy - does the application maintain data integrity?

Again, tracking these business-focused metrics is harder than focusing on ones that are easy to gather. But, the right management software and some automated processes make it straight forward to create meaningful IT dashboards. Will NetEnrich be able to measure what matters to you?