SolarWinds' New IT Asset Management Enhancements, ConnectWise Integrations
We've packed this roundup with news you might have missed in the past month.
October 23, 2020
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Onepath just announced the end of a yearlong company rebranding effort. Effective immediately, the organization the channel knows as Onepath will go by the name “1path.”
The SMB provider cites its decision to rebrand as both a strategic and practical move. It is rooted in the organization’s desire to more clearly communicate its approach, scope of services and corporate values.
At a high level, nothing about 1Path will change. The organization will continue to act as a full-service concierge to its clients.
“We wanted our brand refresh to reflect our modern approach to managed services. I [say] ‘managed services,’ but we’re really more of a business partner,” said Luca Jacobellis, 1Path’s president and COO. “While the technology used by our clients is 1Path’s specialty, we want to share in every client’s long-term vision. We want to grow together. We want to adapt together,” he told Channel Futures.
Jacobellis also emphasized the aspects of the refresh, saying the company’s logo also reflects its forward-thinking, proactive approach to IT.
Pax8 recently announced a new exclusive partnership with Tier2Technologies. Through the partnership with Tier2Technologies, Pax8 partners in North America can now offer “Helpdesk Buttons” and “Tier2Tickets.”
“Tier2Technologies enables partners to automate their clients’ ticketing data collection, ensuring a smooth, seamless process,” said Ryan Walsh, chief channel officer at Pax8. “Processing end-user issues without collecting relevant troubleshooting data can be costly and time-consuming. Using Tier2Technologies’ software, enough data is captured in real-time — enabling you to avoid missing any important diagnostic information and automate the process, saving you and your client time and money. Modern partners want to help their end clients be as efficient as possible, and Tier2Technologies is aiding in the process.”
Partners will now have access to a branded ticketing tool that will help automate their processes for technical support. Helpdesk Buttons, powered by Tier2Tickets, offers a streamlined and automated way to submit a ticket. The software captures real-time system data, a time-lapse video of the user’s last 20 actions, and automatically sends all of the information in a self-diagnosing report to the Pax8 partner’s technicians. With each ticket submitted through the Helpdesk Button, agents get a complete snapshot of the device and enough data to resolve any issue before needing to follow-up with the client.
ConnectWise and CEO Juice recently announced an integration created by CEO Juice for ConnectWise Manage and eAutomate, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software used by MSPs focused on the office technology vertical. The ConnectWise Manage ticketing system will allow eAutomate to reduce redundancies in data entry. This of course will save businesses valuable time and resources.
This integration has been highly requested by customers, which led to a beta of the integration in mid-May. Now, with the integration in place, dealers have a fully automated sync of Agreements from Manage to eAutomate; contracts and the items on the contracts are created by the sync. This lets dealers get customer profit reports in eAutomate for all contracts, including IT.
“Imaging dealers are moving to managed IT, and doing double data entry to get the financial information from ConnectWise Manage into eAutomate, their ERP, was a full-time job,” said Gary Lavin, partner, CEO Juice. “ConnectWise Manage has all these wonderful tools for keeping agreements updated and quoting new projects, but eAutomate users struggled to implement them as they complicated the double data entry, making it much tougher to scale their IT business.”
The sync from Manage Agreements to eAutomate contracts is available now and is included in the monthly subscription for CEO Juice customers. The sync from ConnectWise Sell to eAutomate is coming out in the next two months. Prerequisites for the integration include running ConnectWise 2015.3 or higher and eAutomate 8.7 or later.
Domain Computer Services (“Domain”) recently announced it has completed a merger with Tier One Technology Partners (“Tier One”). The merger is intended to form a premium national MSP platform.
The companies also announced a recapitalization in partnership with Frontenac, a Chicago-based private equity firm. Domain and Tier One specialize in managing the IT and cybersecurity needs of top-tier professional services firms, and both companies have been recognized as award-winning MSP industry leaders in several verticals: Domain in legal and financial services and Tier One in nonprofit. WithFrontenac in the mix, they say they will be able to build a premium national provider of managed IT services by partnering with other MSPs that share their values of operational excellence, vertical focus, employee engagement and development.
The combined firm will be led by Rashaad Bajwa as CEO, Jim Kehres as managing director of the Maryland/D.C. market and Kris Laskarzewski as managing director of the NJ/NY/PA market.
Axcient recently announced Direct to Cloud (D2C). Axcient D2C is the next evolution in backup and disaster recovery (BDR) software, allowing MSPs to protect their clients using one solution for no-hardware BDR, workstation or endpoint backup, and traditional BDR. This builds in flexibility, security and simplification, which enables MSPs to support a hybrid on-premises, cloud and remote work environment across a diverse set of client requirements in one product.
“The way we work will never be the same again because companies and employees are embracing the ‘work from anywhere’ model, necessitating a shift in business operations and security,” said David Bennett, CEO at Axcient. “To help our partners ‘Protect Everything’ for clients working remotely, we created Axcient D2C. Direct-to-cloud backup is the last line of defense against phishing and ransomware, using a layered security best practice. Axcient D2C helps realize our vision to cure data loss and reduce MSP total cost of managed services (TCMS).”
The number of employees working remotely has jumped significantly in a short period of time from 7% to 51%. MSPs crave a flexible BDR solution to meet diverse client requirements and keep costs down, the company said. Axcient x360Recover was designed to meet that requirement.
Axcient x360Recover aims to satisfy three important use cases for MSPs and their clients:
Hardware BDR for clients who need instant local recovery and virtualization.
No-hardware or direct-to-cloud BDR for cloud backup/instant cloud virtualization.
Image-based endpoint backup to the cloud for remote workstations.
Warranty Master just announced that it is rebranding to ScalePad, and launching software asset management, it’s latest service innovation for MSPs.
ScalePad is expanding its asset life cycle management portfolio to include hardware, software and warranty services. Its MSP partners now have access to 10 times more data totaling 100 million assets managed.
Dan Wensley is ScalePad‘s CEO. He said changing the name from Warranty Master to ScalePad is a “milestone in our maturation as a company.”
“And it reflects the evolution of our value proposition to our MSP partners and the MSP ecosystem at large (RMM, PSA),” he said. “With the launch of software asset management, MSP partners can now manage their entire asset life cycle for hardware, software and extended warranty services.”
New brand and tech innovations establish a larger and more profitable revenue streamfor ScalePad’s 8,000+ MSP partners.
ScalePad expands its asset life cycle management portfolio 10x with the addition of software, offering MSPs a 360-degree view of customers’ technology infrastructure and investments.
All partners now get a free preview of software asset management to realize the impact it will have on their businesses.
SolarWinds just announced the addition of new IT asset management (ITAM) integrations to SolarWinds Discovery, including connections with Microsoft Azure and the SolarWinds Orion Platform, as well an upcoming integration with Jamf software. These new enhancements will boost visibility through SolarWinds Service Desk across organizations’ technology infrastructure. The idea is to help them reduce IT spending and risk levels, while improving their overall service management strategy.
IT teams will now be better equipped to maximize the overall value IT provides to the businesses — which is essential for today’s IT leaders. According to Gartner, “Every CIO’s success depends on a thorough understanding of the total cost of IT products and services — that is, the cost of IT services, deliverables and technologies at a total cost level. Communicating the value of IT from the general ledger view of spend is like trying to value a car by looking at the price of the raw materials and component-level spend detail.”
The ITAM integrations to SolarWinds Discovery include:
Microsoft Azure: This integration increases visibility into cloud assets for customers by incorporating asset information from Azure into SolarWinds Service Desk.
Orion Platform: This integration provides dependency information by automatically detecting, mapping and importing Orion dependency information into SolarWinds Service Desk.
Jamf Mobile Device Management (MDM): This integration, which will be available soon, will give customers visibility into asset data on Apple devices by incorporating asset information from Jamf into SolarWinds Service Desk.
These new capabilities increase IT asset visibility, help improve alignment between IT assets and service management processes and enable customers to consolidate asset information from Jamf, Azure, Orion and discovery data sources into one, up-to-date repository, the company said.
“Just this year the role of the IT professional has vastly evolved with growing expectations to deliver exceptional services while reducing budgets and decreasing costs on hardware and software,” said Steve Stover, vice president of product strategy. “These new capabilities focus on supporting service delivery by providing customers with a single source of truth for asset management, which is essential to reducing spend, mitigating risks and staying compliant with software purchases. And, by augmenting our existing capabilities of agent-based and network discovery, organizations big and small gain deeper contextual information and a more complete picture of their IT infrastructure.”
Centreon just released its first State of IT Monitoring survey. The survey was carried out among 600 European and North American IT professionals and confirms the importance of IT monitoring in corporate governance, despite a perceived lack of visibility over IT performance levels.
It also highlights growth trends in terms of investment and recruitment in monitoring, and reveals that the rapid transformation of infrastructure driven by cloud, edge and IoT Computing is paving the way toward deploying new monitoring practices, with a maturity gap between North America and Europe.
Eighty-nine percent of respondents say IT monitoring is a high or top priority for their company. This is particularly the case in North America (48%), where it is more likely to be a top priority than in Europe (40%).
IT monitoring is the field in which companies are recruiting the most (63% versus 49% in security and 36% in networks). Interestingly, organizations in North America may be more immediately aware of the need for IT monitoring positions (73%), while it seems that European organizations may be lagging behind (51%).
Only 27% of respondents rate the visibility over performance levels provided by their monitoring tools as excellent, which is partly explained by the fact that only 61% of the IT estate is monitored, on average.
Ninety percent of respondents believe that it is necessary for their IT team to provide business-oriented KPIs, confirming the importance of monitoring in managing digital business performance and in the digital workplace era.
Findings also highlighted a significant difference between the two sides of the Atlantic. The survey asked, “In your opinion, which of the following technologies/trends will impact your IT monitoring practices over the next three years?” Respondents in North America said the following: IoT, edge computing and big data. Respondents in Europe indicated big data, IoT and AI/machine learning.
“What we found in our research confirms industry trends: that the pace of change in the industry is accelerating and the IT estate is becoming increasingly complex,” said Romain Le Merlus, co-founder and CEO of Centreon North America. “It is a critical requirement of IT operations to support an always-on business, and more MSPs are stepping up to fill the expertise gap, allowing their customers to focus on their business.”
“The unified communications space has been significantly disrupted. WebRTC and ubiquitous collaboration solutions have shaken up the landscape. MSPs must adjust their tools to address this new landscape. Centreon is a tool that embraces the ability to monitor legacy assets and new IoT and next-generation intelligent communication devices synchronously,” said Noel Gish, chief innovation officer and VP of business development at Yorktel, a North American MSP with which Centreon has just signed an agreement.
Pulseway just announced the launch of Pulseway Network Monitoring, available as an add-on for all Pulseway customers as of today. This cool new tool is built directly into both the web-based platform and mobile application and allows customers to monitor their entire network from an all-in-one RMM dashboard.
Pulseway Network Monitoring provides an in-depth view through a network topology map, which gives IT professionals the ability to assess their entire network. The tool allows users to scan corporate networks for existing devices, enroll the devices to Pulseway’s RMM software and run ping, port and SNMP checks on each device. The tool also allows remote control via SSH, telnet and proxying HTTP services so technicians can access devices remotely to quickly respond to alerts.
Integration with this automation workflow engine ensures users will be notified of issues on the monitored devices and also define auto-remediation steps in advance to quickly to automatically resolve issues as they occur.
“In today’s remote work world, it is even more crucial for MSPs and internal IT departments to have a complete view of every device connected to their networks,” said Marius Mihalec, founder and CEO of Pulseway. “Pulseway Network Monitoring makes it easy for IT professionals to manage all devices remotely and identify potential network issues within the easy-to-use Pulseway RMM interface.”
Pulseway just announced the launch of Pulseway Network Monitoring, available as an add-on for all Pulseway customers as of today. This cool new tool is built directly into both the web-based platform and mobile application and allows customers to monitor their entire network from an all-in-one RMM dashboard.
Pulseway Network Monitoring provides an in-depth view through a network topology map, which gives IT professionals the ability to assess their entire network. The tool allows users to scan corporate networks for existing devices, enroll the devices to Pulseway’s RMM software and run ping, port and SNMP checks on each device. The tool also allows remote control via SSH, telnet and proxying HTTP services so technicians can access devices remotely to quickly respond to alerts.
Integration with this automation workflow engine ensures users will be notified of issues on the monitored devices and also define auto-remediation steps in advance to quickly to automatically resolve issues as they occur.
“In today’s remote work world, it is even more crucial for MSPs and internal IT departments to have a complete view of every device connected to their networks,” said Marius Mihalec, founder and CEO of Pulseway. “Pulseway Network Monitoring makes it easy for IT professionals to manage all devices remotely and identify potential network issues within the easy-to-use Pulseway RMM interface.”
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which of course shines a light on security issues big and small, far and wide. Boosting security solution stacks and managing risk are still very much top of mind.
In tandem with this, mergers and partnerships are happening to bolster the IT and cybersecurity needs of companies all over the globe. Channel vendors are introducing new programs and offers to spur the next evolution in backup and disaster recovery (BDR) software.
Check out our snapshot of recent news in the slideshow above. And, happy Cybersecurity Awareness Month!
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