N-able Technologies to Partner with Essentials 2007
N-able (pronounced en-able) announced today that they will be partnering with System Center Essentials 2007 to provide a remote management solution for midsized businesses.
Here is an interview with August Wehrmann, Vice President of Research & Development at N-able Technologies to help explain this new product.
Who is N-able?
N-able Technologies is a global supplier of remote management technology designed exclusively for the SMB market. With our N-central 6.5 software, IT service providers can remotely manage and monitor their clients’ networks and deliver a complete portfolio of managed services from a centralized web-based console.
What does N-able do?
N-able provides the technology, training and business-building support resources solution providers and MSPs need to automate their IT services and more effectively and efficiently manage their clients’ networks from anywhere, at anytime.
What is your Role there?
As head of the N-able’s R&D team, my role is to oversee product management, product development and quality assurance functions, as well as manage the overall technology direction of the solutions that we provide to our customers.
What kind of management services are you providing today through N-central?
N-central has been purpose-built for the IT service provider market, meaning that all of these features are available to the IT service provider from the centralized web-based console in such a way that the service provider can manage multiple end-customer networks from a single system, while maintaining the ability to distinguish between them.
N-able offers the IT industry’s most comprehensive, SMB-focused remote management software solution. Our N-central technology boasts a broad range of remote management capabilities across a wide range of operating systems and networking devices.
By deploying a single, small piece of software at the end-customer location, an IT service provider can discover, monitor and manage desktops, servers, routers, switches, firewalls, etc. using management protocols such as WMI or SNMP and monitor for availability with TCP or ICMP.
For systems that provide mission-critical external-facing functions (such as a web server or a firewall), availability monitoring can also be done from the centralized console across the Internet. For more granularity an additional software agent can be installed on computer systems to monitor applications that produce log files. This agent can be installed on a range of operating systems and versions (e.g., Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Novell).
Specifically for Windows-based platforms, the service provider can also manage patches (through integration with Microsoft WSUS), push/install software packages, run remediation scripts, take remote control etc. The Remote Support Manager module within N-central provides advanced remote management capabilities such as accessing the file system, modifying user properties, editing registry settings, etc. This list of capabilities of the Remote Support Manager is quite comprehensive.
The web-based console is generally located at the service provider’s co-location facility if purchased as an on-premise solution or located in our hosting facility if purchased from us through a software-as-a-service subscription.
What made you decide to integrate with System Center Essentials 2007?
Our decision to integrate N-central and System Center Essentials was driven primarily by giving our partners what they are looking for, which is a combined solution that can address their needs across their entire end customer base.
The trend we are seeing in our partner base is that they have become more sophisticated in terms of the management services that they offer to their end customers. In turn, the level of sophistication in the end customer has also increased as the partner moves up market from the small to medium business. System Center Essentials provides our partners with a more in-depth level of management capability for Microsoft applications (and others) that is required in larger environments. By teaming with Microsoft we can capture this functionality for our partners without having to reinvent the wheel.
What would be the main benefits for customers and partners out of this collaboration?
The benefit for partners is that they can still use a centralized console and workflow for the majority of their day-to-day management activities. This would include accessing centralized asset information, monitoring, alerts and reporting. For specific management needs, they may choose to use a specialized solution, such as SCE. By combining the solutions, our partners can leverage the strengths of both technologies and increase the value they provide to SMBs. That said the underlying benefit to the end customer is a better level of service that is tuned to their needs and is delivered in an efficient and consistent manner.
Which partners will gain the most value from this combined offering?
The integration is applicable to two sets of partners.
1) Existing N-able partners who are interested in augmenting their service delivery capabilities for higher value customer engagements can leverage the combined offering without having to disrupt their current best practices.
2) Existing Microsoft partners who are familiar with using SCE and want to take advantage of N-central’s centralized management paradigm and capability to incorporate non-Windows systems into their service offerings. This collaboration brings tremendous value to both N-able and Microsoft partners.
How do will this integration take place, are there different milestones for the integration?
The integration will come in a series of release updates to our N-central product. We plan to integrate in phases, providing incrementally more integration with each release. This approach allows us to get the functionality into our partners hands sooner rather than later and obtain feedback that we can then incorporate into subsequent phases.
What will be in the integration level release?
We are working very closely with Microsoft to ensure the integration of N-central and SCE. Our top four priorities for integration include:
1) Synchronize device asset information. N-central currently has the capability to auto-discover network assets as well as provide hardware and software level inventory enumeration for Windows-based systems (servers and desktops). Through integration between N-central and SCE a service provider can obtain a more comprehensive inventory from SCE-managed devices which can be rolled up into the centralized reporting infrastructure provided by N-central. In addition, this stage of integration acts as a pre-requisite for subsequent integration.
2) Centralize alert management for incidents reported by SCE installations at the customer locations. N-central will interface to SCE and report alerts (exceptions) to the N-central console. Alerts from multiple SCE installations can be centralized within N-central and the service provider can use existing escalation rules and workflow to action and acknowledge the alerts. Optionally, alerts can be acknowledged either through the N-central console or through the SCE console as preferred. In addition, reporting on alerts generated by SCE can be combined with alerts generated against devices not under SCE management.
3) Extend remote management and remediation capabilities. N-central has the capability to execute remote scripts and software installation tasks. With additional integration, remediation capabilities within SCE can be initiated from the N-central console as required as either standalone activities or scripted alongside pre-existing remediation capabilities within N-central.
4) Provide remote SCE console access. By leveraging N-central’s remote control infrastructure, a service provider would be able to launch a SCE console session from the N-central console as required to connect to any SCE server at an end customer location.
When do you expect to have a public beta?
N-able currently plans to make an initial phase of integration available in the second half of 2008.
Where can someone go for more information?
For more information please call N-able’s Wanda Carty at (877) 655-4689 x 361 or visit http://www.n-able.com/msp/technology/n-central/management/microsoft/
Also be sure to check out N-able’s blog at http://blogs.n-able.com/home/default.aspx.
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