Last week Network management point-product vendor Solarwinds Inc.(NYSE: SWI) announced that it is acquiring Storage Management vendor Tek-Toolsfor $42M in cash and stock.

I can understand the need for the acquisition and I would say that it is probably a good move by solarwinds to fill a gap in their portfolio. We(ManageEngine) have had storage network management since 2005 (ManageEngine OpStor) and until recently Storage Network management had predominantly been a large enterprise affair. But the current drive towards server consolidation and virtualization is actually propping up the need for Storage networks and Storage  management  among mid-sized enterprises and Solarwind's need to include Storage management in it's portfolio is probably justified.

What is surprising to me is the terms of the deal. Why did Solarwinds pay $42M for a company with revenues of $4M and an operating loss of $3M? Seems that the good old days of dot com valuations are back :) Either Solarwinds is very desparate or Storage Management has suddenly become the killer "must-have" technology in 2010 ! (very unlikely, but even then does not justify the steep valuations)

Solarwinds used to be an engineering company focused on building good products. Maybe the pressure of being a public company is forcing them to show results quickly. They have acquired ipMonitor (for Server and Application management functionality), Kiwi (for log management), Lan Surveyor (for Layer 2 discovery) and now Tek-Tools for Storage management. Acquiring disparate products and integrating them at a GUI level may provide short-term boosts to revenue, but it is exactly this kind of headache that customers hate when dealing with the Big 4. (And Solarwinds would know this better than anyone else :) )

Anyway, customers who don't like this "Acquire and perform brand level integration" strategy can check out the more complete portfolio of Enteprise IT Management products from ManageEngine here.

For now I would like to wager a bet that Solarwinds is working on a free Desktop Storage management tool that can monitor a tiny unit of storage(like say 1GB) for a minuscule amount of time(60 minutes?) to bait customers similar to this. But we know that customers can use Google to find better deals like this.

 While talking to one of our prospects a while back, he asked us a question "Why should I choose ManageEngine IT360?" After all, he had already invested in some solution which delivered some, if not all answers. What was the necessity to go for IT360?

And it got me thinking. Why does the user need IT360? The best possible analogy I could come up with was this. ManageEngine IT360 is to IT infrastructure monitoring as Lamborghini Reventón is to supercar. Let me explain.

Since the dawn of civilization, mankind has always been fascinated by speed. With the invention of wheel and the internal combustion engine, man found ways and means to come up with some exciting supercars to satisfy the thirst for speed. In this quest, several automotive car companies have tried and developed supercars which exceed speed of 250+ mph. One company called Lamborghini succeeded in developing some of those exciting supercars of today. They include Gallardo, Countach, Diablo, Murciélago and Reventón.

The latest edition of Lamborghini - Reventón - was developed and launched in 2008-09. It is a 2-door-coupe, mid-engine, four wheel drive with a 6 speed gear change. Its 6.5 V12 engine develops a whooping 600+ brake horse power (bhp). It is not only one of the fastest cars in the world, but also the most stylish looking car. Its arrow-head design copied from the fighter jets allow it to cut across the air smoothly allowing less drag which helps maintain incredible stability even at extreme high speeds and cutting corners. It has two in-built hidden pop-up bars which deploy within hundredths of a second even at a whiff of a roll over, preventing critical injuries to the person sitting inside the car. In short, this is an engineering master-piece.

When someone can afford 1.6 million U.S. dollars, they don't buy a Ford Fiesta or Fiat Punto. They buy a supercar, more specifically a Lamborghini Reventón. Why? Simply because they can (obviously) but more importantly it is one of the fastest, good looking supercar there is.

So what makes me say that IT360 is equal to a Lambo? Here are some hard facts;

IT360’s browser-based console environment and easy-to-use interface allows even the Joe the (server) plumber guy, to understand its functionalities easily and start work with them. Reventón is very smooth and fast even during corners. IT360 is also smooth and very fast. Since IT360 was released last September, many evaluators have told us that they like the way each product is integrated and how "it just works". Since we do not have any complex modules as a result of acquired portfolios, ManageEngine IT360 does not need any further investment to make the solution work seamlessly.

Like the 6.5 V12 Reventón engine which delivers 600+ bhp, with a top speed of 220 mph. IT360 delivers information instantaneously with enough information for you to act upon. It immediately alerts of any performance issue which may cause degradation of your business service. Its root cause engine delivers vital intelligence to the cause of the issue - how it occurred, when it occurred and which systems are being affected.

The only difference I find between Lamborghini Reventón and ManageEngine IT360 is that it delivers the same type of performance like the supercar but at a fraction of cost! 

IT360 comes at the right cost of what others are willing to offer because of a simple reason. We have been working on this product for several years tweaking and tuning and making sure it works the way it is supposed to - just like they do when Lambo develops a supercar. Our in-depth engineering expertise allows us to ensure that IT360 deliver the answers that you want and need. This makes it easy for us to deliver such high value product at the right price for you.

Owning a Reventón gives you a sense of happiness and pride. You feel you have earned the right to drive in such a high priced, supercar. IT360 also delivers a similar sense of relief, knowing that you will get answers to all of your questions. The additional plus point is that you would be a lot richer for not spending too much money on different solutions which work in different ways.

To sum it up, by choosing to go with IT360, you are choosing to make your life easier, exciting and making you the talk of IT Team in your organization! So why not give IT360 a test drive today and feel a new excitement in monitoring your critical IT resources?

Call us on toll free number 1-888-720-9500 or 1-800-443-6694. You can also reach us via email at it360-support@manageengine.com.

 At ManageEngine IT360, we always strive to ensure that the user must be able to perform complex tasks with little or minimal effort. In this post, I am going to talk about the three different operations you can perform in Dashboard page.

1. Generate different views of your IT business services
2. Create new business service
3. Create customized dashboards for various stakeholders

1. Generate Different Views of Your IT Business Services

ManageEngine IT360 offers four distinct views to view your IT business service(s). They are:

   1. Your traditional List View
   2. Tree View
   3. Plasma View and
   4. Global Business View

In your List View mode, you will be able to see the a bit more in-depth about the various business services that you have created. You will view the Availability, Health, Monitor Status, and Today's Availability (in % of uptime) of each business service created within IT360. By clicking on the health or availability icon, you can view the complete Root Cause Analysis (RCA) of the business service.

In Tree View mode, you can view entire list of business service sub-groups and its monitors. In this view, you can view the  availability and health of those monitors. It also displays the list of 'Uncategorized Monitors' which are being monitored through IT360 but not associated with any of the business services. 

With Plasma View mode, as the name suggests, you can display the entire list of monitors in a huge plasma screen. This view will contain the monitor's current status, major alarms created so far along with its business services health & availability.

And Global Business View displays the entire business services combined under a single business view. As before, you can host them in a large plasma screen for display.

2. Create New Business Services

3. Create Different Dashboards for various stakeholders

To create a new dashboard click on any of the 'Add' link to create a Network,Server & Applications or Traffic dashboards.

So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and try these options :-)

When a server goes down or when the response time of a database query exceeds the normal query execution time, any monitoring system in place should perform two actions. One to generate an alarm with relevant information (preferably the RCA - Root Cause Analysis) and secondly to log a ticket into a Service Desk solution. It may additionally execute an SMS action to notify the right technician.

With IT360, you can do that without any external interference. IT360 allows you to automate these actions thereby reducing time taken to troubleshoot the issue. In today's post, we will see how to create threshold, assign action and configure alarms so that the action is properly executed.

Creating Thresholds

3. Click on 'Associate' opposite to 'Response Time'. This will open a pop-up configuration window, wherein you can select the correct threshold corresponding to response time. 

4. Click on 'Save' and 'Close' button to save and close the configuration window. You will now find that the response time for the Apache server is now configured and ready for associating an action.

Create Ticket Action

1. Provide a proper name for the ticket.

2. Select the correct Category, Sub Category, Item, Priority, Group and Technician who will be responsible for this web server.

3. IT360 also allows you to insert relevant details into the Ticket content. This enables the technician to view relevant information. This allows the technician to troubleshoot the performance issue quickly.

4. Click on 'Log a Ticket' button to complete the process.

Additionally, you can also execute this action manually by clicking on thisicon. You can also update ticket's content, change category, sub category, etc by clicking on the edit  icon.

Assign Ticket Action

Select the appropriate action that needs to be associated with this threshold value. You can create actions and enable them in such a way that you can get alerted when there is an issue, or when the issue clears or when the issue is going to get critical. Once you have chosen the action and clicked the 'Save' & 'Close' button, the configuration is done. The next time when the response time threshold value is breached, the technician is automatically notified. A ticket is logged into the Service Desk solution. In addition to this, you can also associate an SMS action to this threshold thus ensuring the technician receives the information as soon as the incident occurs.

Similarly, you can create an ad-hoc action by clicking on 'New Action' link inside the configuration pop-up window. It will allow you to create the following actions as displayed in the screenshot below.

In continuation to my previous post about report generation in IT360, I will be talking about how to enable, schedule and generate reports for various IT resources/business services in this post.

Enabling Reports

IT360 provides a multitude of metrics for each IT resource that is being monitored. It also allows you to select a specific metric for each individual IT resource and generate report only for that metric. In this manner, IT360 eliminates the possibility of having the only data that you need, thereby reducing clutter in your report.

In order to generate such reports, click on 'Reports' tab and then click on 'Enable Reports' link. Under 'Custom Reports' you will find a list of metrics for various IT resource (monitor). Some of which are already selected by default. You can either choose these default metrics or select metrics which only you need.

In addition, you can also generate downtime summary report of these monitors by clicking on 'Downtime Summary Report' tab. Select the 'Time' at which the report should be generated along with proper email action.

Schedule Reports

To schedule reports for a business service or for a particular monitor, click on 'Schedule Reports' link under 'Reports' tab. Select a proper name and description for the report. Now select the appropriate report type from the pull-down menu (Availability, Health, Attribute, Alarm, Downtime, etc). Then select the 'Report Period' which allows you to select the period of data would you like to view in your report (Today's, Yesterday's, Last 7 days, Last 30 days etc).

Next we come to the crucial part of the process. You have two options: one to select 'Business Service' or two to select 'Monitor'. If you select Business Service, IT360 will provide you the list of various business services created, along with its sub-group. You can either select the entire business service as it is or select the business service sub-group alone.

Similarly, when you select the 'Monitor' option, IT360 provides the entire list of applications/servers/databases that are supported. You can select the monitor types for which you would like the reports to be generated.

Once you that is done, you can select whether this report should be generated daily/weekly/monthly. You can also select the specific time and month(s) should it be generated. These reports are available in PDF format.

The same applies for networks as well. Just click on 'Networks' tab under 'Reports' module. Select any report for which you want to schedule. Click on 'Schedule This'. Provide correct details for the scheduling the report and click 'OK' to schedule the report. 

Now you have the reports with critical data, generated automatically and regularly without any intervention. You can also create multiple reports for various business services or monitor types as well. You can disable them at any time in case you want these reports to be generated.

Report generation is the one of the important task of all management tasks. This allows the IT Administrator analyze the trend of every IT resource over time and evaluate its performance. This analysis is useful for making calculated predictions and help take corrective actions.

Generating reports in ManageEngine IT360 is one of the easiest tasks. You have a centralized location from where you can generate a number of different types of reports. You can generate trend analysis report, availability report for the entire business service or for a particular monitor (IT resource). For example, this also allows you to generate Trend Analysis Report which enables you to track various trends of response times of WebLogic Server, view active JDBC connections, JVM Heap Current Size etc. You can also generate reports for ERP system metrics such as SAP or Oracle E-business suite such as Page In/Page Out rate, Spool Utilization, number of Enqueue Requests etc.

To generate these reports in ManageEngine IT360, log in to IT360 console and click on the 'Reports' module tab. In this tab ManageEngine IT360 allows you to generate report for either the business services (applications & servers) or for the network devices which are being monitored.

For business services, you can generate Availability reports, Health reports, Alarm Summary reports, Response time reports, Downtime reports, Trend Analysis report and much more. For more information on Reports in IT360, click here.

ManageEngine IT360 also allows you to generate report for any specific monitor (IT resource) or any specific attribute for that monitor. For example, you can generate the Response time (in ms) for a WebLogic server. You can also generate availability report of an entire business service for any particular period during which it is monitored. You can also select a specific attribute within the business service and generate report.



Similarly to generate reports for various network devices monitored using ManageEngine IT360, click on 'Network' tab. Here you will find a multitude of options to choose from. You can generate reports for various network events, downtimes, alerts etc.



You can also create new reports types such as performance reports, availability reports, response time & packet loss reports, inventory reports and custom reports. Simply provide the name for the new report, select the type of report you need to generate for a device and select the device for which the report needs to be generated. IT360 will automatically select the various attributes available for the device and lets you choose the attributes for which the report is generated.



In the next post, we will discuss about how to schedule reports, enable reports and talk more in-depth about reporting.

 Today (Press Release) marks the general availability of ManageEngine IT360 (version 8.0), an integrated business service management which allows users to monitor their IT infrastructure with a business context. Since the Beta release in March, we have been receiving overwhelming response from our users and a great number of feedbacks. These feedbacks helped us design this BSM solution which caters to various end users needs.

ManageEngine IT360’s Business Dashboard interface displays the components that make up an organization’s network and the various business services those components support.  Business Dashboards can be customized for specific job functions - from IT administrator up to CIO – with the level of detail displayed tailored for each role. Similarly network, application and traffic dashboards allow each user view information that are specific to their job functions enabling them to do their task effortlessly in addition to creating awareness of the impact it has on each business service. 

Integrated with ITIL ready Service Desk which features automated trouble ticketing, complete with incident management, problem management, change management, a knowledge base, and more, ManageEngine IT360 reduces the complexity of workflows in production and making it easier for IT administrators to run effective operations.

In addition, support for Oracle E-business suite, VMWare device support, VoIP monitor support is also added. I will be also providing some in-depth details about each feature mentioned here. Feel free to check out some of the new screenshots of these features mentioned here.

So what are you waiting for still? Go ahead and download ManageEngine IT360 now. The pricing of ManageEngine IT360 starts at $4,995 per Year. For more information on various pricing packs, click here.

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