Nimsoft Launches Unified Monitoring Alliance

Nimsoft has launched a Unified Monitoring Alliance that includes Autotask, ConnectWise, FusionStorm, Ingram Micro, Rackspace Hosting and roughly 30 other service providers and independent software vendors. What does all this mean? Here’s my take on Nimsoft’s efforts.

For more than a year, readers have been telling MSPmentor that they need a single dashboard for monitoring on-premise systems and a growing number of cloud applications.

Already, roughly 20 percent of MSPmentor readers are monitoring their customers’ cloud applications, according to a May 2009 MSPmentor reader poll. But many MSPs use a hodgepodge of tools to monitor a range of customer systems.

Eager to solve those challenges, Nimsoft in October 2009 launched a Unified Monitoring platform that apparently allows MSPs and IT managers to monitor IT infrastructure from the data center to the cloud.

Helping Hands

Still, building a single dashboard that can monitor scores of third-party applications requires third-party help. That’s where the Unified Monitoring Alliance enters the picture.

According to a Nimsoft press release, the alliance will include three types of partners:

The Bigger Picture

The Unified Monitoring Alliance sure sounds promising. But remember: Multiple software companies in the MSP industry want to be the de facto dashboard for monitoring or maintaining all systems.

Two quick examples:

Still, each dashboard effort varies from the next. In Nimsoft’s case, the company clearly wants to appeal to both corporate IT managers and service providers. Plenty of vendors are lining up to voice support for the Unified Monitoring Alliance. But it will take months to truly measure the alliance’s potential impact.

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