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The excitement continues! As we first wrote early last Tuesday morning with blurry eyes, the upgraded GoToManage service is live and is accompanied by a terrific new remote support offering, GoToAssist Pro.
The services have been designed for what IT professionals need – proactive monitoring of key machines and instant remote control. Whether you are an IT manager within a company or an IT consultant, we designed this platform with you in mind. And the integration between the two services makes going from tacking what’s happening to remotely connecting to an end user’s computer or unattended server a snap.
So here are the highlights of what went live and a few screenshots to show what’s new.
Fresh look and feel
You will notice that GoToManage looks different. We started from scratch and gave it a richer, more welcoming appearance. We simplified the design and color palette to be quintessential Citrix. It puts more power into the hands of the user and helps focus the purpose of each page.
Integrated remote support – GoToAssist Pro
If we were going to highlight one change, this would be it. We heard you and have responded with what we think will delight. GoToAssist Pro provides both end user live-support capabilities and the ability to access and control remote computers and servers when they are unattended. Combine this remote support functionality with the power of proactive monitoring and alerting via GoToManage and you have the perfect combination for managing your IT environment.
New alerting engine with escalation paths
We rewrote the alerting engine to include detailed escalation and notification paths depending on the severity of an issue. And best of all, you control who, when, and how people are notified. As always, you can track when a set of search results changes, such as the number of users with administrative privileges, and keep tabs on when a specific value changes, such as bandwidth and disk space thresholds.
Easier control over monitoring / data collection
We have made it easier than ever to specify what you want to monitor and what you do not want to monitor. While GoToManage will discover everything (which is great for inventory management and network audits), you may decide that you only want to track the computers, servers, and network equipment. No problem, it’s now easy to control.
Tree-based company and device navigation
Many of you are familiar with using tree-based structures for navigation. We decided to build on this familiarity and orient the service so you can browse all of your sites (or companies) via a tree and filter through your inventory in the same way.
Detailed user permissions
Set up as many users as you like and specify which machines they can monitor and control. You can also control who can make billing changes and set up as many sites under your master account as you want. And control everything from account set up to user management via your Web browser.
You will find significant improvements at every turn. So get going and let us know what you think. These upgrades were driven by customer requests, so we are eager to hear what you think should come next.
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We are proud to deliver what many of you have been waiting for — integrated remote monitoring and remote support. It’s been a long time coming, and we are excited about GoToManage and GoToAssist Pro. Together, these services are perfect if you manage IT for a business or support clients through an IT consulting business.
Look for a longer post shortly that will cover some of the terrific new upgrades to the GoToManage service including an entirely new alerting engine with escalation and notification controls, expanded management of data collection and user permissions, simplified server monitoring, and a totally fresh new design. We will also be writing about GoToAssist Pro which allows you to go from viewing a machine in GoToManage to connecting to it in seconds. It has been designed for IT teams that need to support both end users and unattended computers and servers.
To take advantage of all of these new features, please follow the steps to reset your password and get going. As always, we are eagerly anticipating your feedback and will continue to rapidly make the service even more powerful and easier to use.
Best,
Your GoToManage team
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We are thrilled to share the news with you that Paglo has been acquired by Citrix Online, one of the world’s leading SaaS companies, which generated revenue of over $300M in 2009.
The first thing you should know is that Paglo services will continue to operate with no planned service interruption for our customers. Also, rest assured that we will continue to provide the same high-quality capabilities that you have come to expect. But starting today, you will know us under a new service name – GoToManage™.
We founded Paglo 2.5 years ago to provide a radically more efficient and easier-to-use IT management solution. In only a few years, we have attracted thousands of customers and have been recognized as a top technology and cloud computing infrastructure company. We pioneered work in IT search and have helped IT professionals gain a more complete view of their environment, proactively monitor key systems, and manage their network resources.
Today, we are joining forces with the company with the largest global market share in remote support. Citrix Online was first to market corporate Web-based remote support 10 years ago and continued to innovate last year with the addition of GoToAssist Express, a support solution for individual professionals and small businesses. According to leading analyst firm IDC, Citrix Online has 34.7 percent of the worldwide remote support market share.
By joining Citrix Online we can accelerate our ability to expand our service and integrate our monitoring capabilities with Citrix Online’s remote support services. It’s a great opportunity that could bring Paglo’s disruptive approach to IT management to millions more businesses, IT consultants, and managed service providers (MSPs). Together, we will benefit from the significant resources and market presence of Citrix Online.
All of Paglo’s employees, Dr. Chris Waters (my co-founder and Paglo CTO), and I are excited to be part of a larger team committed to a singular vision of providing exactly what businesses are looking for: a “Simpler is Better” approach to IT management through Web-based services.
We look forward to continuing to work closely with you and expanding our lead in the IT management SaaS market.
Best regards,
Brian de Haaff
Co-founder and CEO
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As 2009 comes to a close, we thought we would take a look ahead towards 2010 and how technology and in particular “consumer Web trends” are impacting IT.
The following is our view of the top 3 trends and an initial assessment of what it means for IT and managed service providers (MSPs).
Why only three trends you might ask? There are a number of reasons including the fact that we like to try and distill the complicated to its essence (and can you really remember any Top 10 list?), but more importantly, we believe most other technology related trends including: social networking, the explosive growth of user generated content, location-awareness, mobile payments, and increased regulation, stand on the shoulders of these three.
1. The real-time Web
Real-time refers to the immediacy with which we want to interact with others and assess the world around us. Our demand for constant connectedness will move from a tradeoff (do I eat breakfast first or start checking my Twitter feed) to a more integrated way of being and living (my device will analyze and report to me what happened during the night while I eat breakfast). The border between what is physical and immediately in front of us and the virtual world around us will begin to meld over time. The implication for IT will be massive in a number of critical areas. Web connected devices will be the norm and critical applications will need to be omnipresent regardless of where a user is (or device that they are using). Users will expect to seamlessly transition from one device to another and management will require instant visibility into what is happening across the organization and marketplace. There will be an ever increasing flow of data and business intelligence required to digest it.
2. Cloud computing
This is the one that takes the cake for the most hype and general misunderstanding. You could simply say that cloud computing is defined as “applications running on the Internet.” These could be provided by an ISV (e.g. the Paglo IT Management SaaS service) or you could build an online application on your own on a platform like Amazon or Google. With this in mind, as we recently pointed out, just because you offer a hosted application or provide an online service, you are not delivering a cloud computing platform which others can build apps on. Regardless, we wonder when a Web-centric OS like Google Chrome OS will change how we think about the desktop vs. the cloud. When it becomes as easy to pick and chose online applications and share data amongst them (as with desktop) computing today, game over. The cloud will be the computer. IT will need to carefully watch this transformation. And a good canary to monitor will be the launch of Microsoft’s Office Web Apps which is the free online version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. This is scheduled to happen in 2010.
3. Your privacy is an illusion
The self is more transparent than ever. And the secure corporate barrier which formerly protected the “crown jewels” is no more. Blame it on the real-time Web and the human desire to communicate. People and businesses are increasingly inside-out. This trend is thorny because on the one hand it helps create deeper relationships for businesses, but it also opens us up to disclosure leaks and external threats like never before. Saying “No!” will fail, and sitting back and doing nothing will lead to disaster. IT must be part of the ongoing discussion and use both policy and technology where necessary to define and reestablish an acceptable barrier. We especially see the need in small and mid-sized organizations and note that this is one area where consultants can differentiate themselves and truly provide value-added service.
These are the key trends that we think matter. The good news is that by grappling with them IT professionals will further highlight their strategic value.
We are looking forward to an exciting 2010.
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It happened again. We were selected for another award that we never applied for. It is with humble pride that we share the news.
We were selected by AlwaysOn as one of the OnDC Top 100 winners. Inclusion in the OnDC 100 requires that the company has created new business opportunities that contribute to the prosperity of our country. While our service benefits customers worldwide, we think this is a tribute to the IT and log Management SaaS platform that we have created.
We have been told that an editorial team and industry experts selected Paglo based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.
The company is being honored at AlwaysOn’s OnDC event in Washington, D.C. The OnDC 100 winners were selected from among hundreds of other technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists and industry insiders. The AlwaysOn editorial team conducted a rigorous three-month selection process to finalize the 2009 list.
We look forward to keeping you in the loop as the company progresses and the team and our customers are recognized.
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We just rolled out new Dashboard functionality that allows you to monitor multiple sites or client’s on one Dashboard.
For example, you may want a quick server health snapshot across all of your clients in one view. That is now possible and means that you can more quickly recognize when there might be a problem that needs your attention.
You can see in the screenshot below that we have the Server Health application presenting data from three different companies simultaneously.
To add your own log in to your account and simply…
→ select Actions next to a Dashboard name and then;
→ select Add Application and then;
→ choose the Server Health Application if you want to replicate the screenshot above and then;
→ choose the application and then;
→ click on the blue Info button (in the Server Health panel) and then;
→ choose the company that the panel will show information for.
That’s it. Enjoy.
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And so there we were on the second page of the Marketplace section last week in the Wall Street Journal. The article was titled Start-Ups Aim to Help Tame Corporate Data and three companies were profiled and two customers interviewed.
The story was about how "consumers have long been able to use search engines like Google, Yahoo and Ask.com to find everything from obscure Web sites to travel deals on the Internet, there have been few similar tools for companies to search the increasing amounts of traffic generated by server computers and other devices and to look through their “unstructured” data…" We could not agree more and that is why we started Paglo in the first place.
We were thrilled to put Pui-Wing Tam of the Wall Street Journal in contact with one of our customers, George Burden, a systems administrator at Benewah Medical Center in Idaho.
George summed up what he likes best about Paglo and our IT management SaaS service when he said, “The technology searches through my IT network constantly and gives us a complete inventory. We have to be able to notify people when the system is down, rather than be reactive.”
Let us know if you saw the article and what you thought.
(Access to the complete article may require an WSJ online account if you visit the site often.)
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If you are a regular user of Paglo and have created dashboards for network management, server monitoring, asset tracking, or just about anything else, you will appreciate three new features that we just rolled out. When we asked our most active users about what they wanted before our next major release, these were the most requested new dashboard improvements.
The benefit of being on-demand and delivering IT Management as SaaS, is that you do not need to do anything to take advantage of the new capabilities. So here they are.
Auto-refresh
This was by far the feature that people wanted most. You can now configure your dashboards to auto-refresh at an interval of your liking. This is particularly useful in NOC environments where you have a monitor on the wall and multiple people watching what’s happening.
Column-customization
You can now also select how many columns you want on your dashboards so you can monitor more key infrastructure on one screen. For example, if you are like us, you may want to track 12 different charts at one time on your flat screen.
Legend position
When you are monitoring lots of items on a line chart you can now decided where to place the legend so it does not interfere with reading the actual chart. Use the new legend control to determine where you want to see the legend.
Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on how we should improve our dashboards. And stay tuned as we have some exciting new additions coming in the next few weeks.
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In the past we gave you the ability to monitor your VMware hosts and guests, but now there is a complete Paglo application for your use. You can read about how to get started here
This application provides another key piece of in our rapidly expanding IT Management SaaS platform.
The Paglo Crawler includes a plugin that will collect rich information from VMware ESX, VMware ESXi, and VMware vCenter (Virtual Center). This information will be securely submitted to your Paglo Search Index.
Check out a few more screenshots of all of our server monitoring features and applications.
To install the new application, click on the word Applications on the left of the screen (while logged in to your account) and select Install Application.
Send us an email or call if you want to learn more.
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We are going start posting quick hitting FAQs about Paglo. These are based on real customer questions and are useful to publish for everyone who is interested in Paglo and our IT Management SaaS platform.
Question
How resilient is the Paglo Crawler?
Answer
The Paglo Crawler is designed to be as fault tolerant as possible and is built in a similar way to the Google Chrome browser. This is the reason that there are multiple Crawler processes. The CrawlerExecutive process monitors the other Crawler processes and restarts them if necessary. If communication is lost with your Paglo account, then the Crawler will store timestamped data on disk until connection is re-established. This also applies to log data sent through the Crawler as well.
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We just did the impossible. We just delivered the world’s first cloud-based log search engine – Paglo Logs. True to our philosophy of – collect everything – we are thrilled to add complete log indexing and search to Paglo.
Paglo is a completely fresh approach to managing IT. And now with logs added to our IT Management SaaS platform you can sign up for free and use a complete search engine for IT. Our Universal IT Search technology means that you can use Google-like search to query your logs and everything else that is IT and Operations related (devices, software, users, network, etc.).
Your devices and applications generate tons of data every second of every day. Today, almost all of that information is lost. So, imagine if you could automatically capture all of that data – and search and visualize it in real-time. That day has arrived.
The power of having all of the data and search is that it enables rapid discovery of key operational events, a platform for meeting compliance requirements, and a way to accelerate the investigation of security incidents.
Because Paglo collects all of your log and IT data, search results return both event and asset information. You can also go directly from your logs to the underlying infrastructure. For example, if you run a query that highlights the fact that a device is generating lots of errors, you can instantly view historical charts of the CPU, Memory, and Free Disk space on that machine.
The fact that Paglo now collects logs, in addition to the asset and network related data means that you can achieve the following:
- Accelerate problem resolution by going directly from the logged events to the underlying infrastructure, to view health and performance data or to access a particular machine.
Read more about Paglo Logs here
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What a day. Two terrific new applications have been added to what CNET just called the “all-in-one” IT Management service.
Do you have a virtualization strategy and virtualized infrastructure? If so, you know how difficult it can be to monitor and manage even one virtual server, not to mention all of your virtual servers as they proliferate.
Paglo now tracks all of the host and VM configurations and delivers real-time resource monitoring and capacity analysis capabilities. Through trend analysis and detailed dashboards that display resource utilization trends, you can easily predict capacity bottlenecks. Paglo enables you to increase VM densities on existing hardware which reduces the need to purchase expensive server infrastructure.
You can also set up alerts to be notified when critical thresholds are met and directly integrate Paglo’s inventory management and search capabilities into VMware vCenter (VirtualCenter). This makes it easy to understand what OS and software is running on each VM without leaving the vCenter interface.
Another issue arises as your virtual infrastructure grows. Managing simple tasks like tracking the hosts and VMs becomes difficult, especially as others create new instances. Paglo’s universal search technology allows you to instantly answer the following questions:
- What host a VM is on
- What VMs are deployed on a given host
- The IP address of a VM
- What the VM is for an IP address
- What OS and software is deployed on your VMs
The Paglo Virtualization Monitoring application is included at no additional cost with the basic Paglo service for managing your entire IT infrastructure.
The benefits of using Paglo for your VMware virtual infrastructure include:
- A unified view of all distributed physical and virtual VMware machines and the ability to search and report on them
- Paglo integrated directly into the VMware VirtualCenter (Vcenter) client for instant querying and browsing of data from the virtualized environment
- The ability to search and analyze historical data about the VMs, including how their configuration compares to other instances and has changed over time
- Automated alerting based on customer-defined critical machine and process thresholds and any downtime
- Long-term collection and storage of historical server trend data for capacity planning and audit purposes with no capital investment
Read more about the new functionality here
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We just rolled out the newest Paglo application –- Server Health. It is complete server monitoring for your key infrastructure, offered as SaaS of course. And best of all it is included at no additional cost.
Paglo now provides detailed host and application availability and latency information by monitoring all aspects of Windows, Linux, and VMware ESX servers. It provides one single server monitor view to track the health and performance of all key physical and virtual IT infrastructure. Paglo is offered on-demand so you can tackle the complexity of managing your enterprise data center and if you are a cloud service provider you can monitor your infrastructure without the added expense of deploying expensive hardware and software management software.
The new application provides a quick-glance view of the overall health of your servers and individual charts can be moved onto Dashboards so you can monitor them in context of the overall environment. You can also set up alerts directly in the application to notify you if any device or process latency or downtime.
Read more here
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We heard your requests and Paglo is now custom brandable! The leading IT Management SaaS platform just got that much better (and personal).
If you are an IT consultant or business that uses Paglo for network monitoring, inventory management, network management, software audits, etc. and wants to personalize the service, you can completely rebrand the Paglo interface and reports that you generate.
The platform was built with MSPs, VARs, and online service providers in mind. By creating sub-accounts for clients and rebranding the interface, you can provide a custom experience for your clients. If you are an MSP who delivers services on an ongoing basis you can instantly upload your logo and your client’s logos which are then presented in the user interface and on reports.
The benefit is that managed service providers can deliver a more personalized and professional service with zero additional effort.
The custom branding functionality is available now and costs only $25 per account per month. If you are an existing customer, take advantage of it immediately by upgrading your account online and uploading their logo.
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The newest Paglo application is now ready for you to use. Because we auto discover everything IT, new applications on our IT Management SaaS platform come fast and furious.
The new Patch Management application allows you to monitor the status of your patches and ensure that machines are in compliance with your pre-defined operational and compliance goals.
You can check out the screenshots.
Paglo Patch Management continuously monitors all Windows devices to ensure they are up-to-date. It integrates directly with your Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) to enable IT administrators to specify policy and deploy the latest Microsoft product updates to computers running the Windows operating system. And because all of the historical patch data is stored in your Paglo account, it is easy to search, report on, and visualize through custom dashboards and reports. By using Paglo and WSUS, you can fully manage the distribution of updates that are released through Microsoft Update to computers in the networks that they control.
The new Patch Management application is included at no additional cost with the Paglo service. There is no hardware required or complex software to set up.
Sign up here for a no risk account to get started.
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We are thrilled to report that InformationWeek has identified Paglo as one of a handful of companies that is changing how businesses manage IT.
Paglo was one of only 50 companies from around the world that received this honor and the top company profiled on the InformationWeek web site.
Paglo and software-as-a-service (SaaS) in general are disrupting the IT management software market which was recently estimated to be worth over $18 billion by Forrester Research, a leading analyst firm. InformationWeek recognized the company as a leader noting that with Paglo search and SaaS unite for IT management Paglo is a complete IT management platform that includes everything IT professionals need including applications for inventory management, server and data center performance monitoring, and network management.
The InformationWeek editorial staff made the final selections based on reader votes and analysis of several criteria including: innovation and the company’s ability to inject new ways of doing things into business processes; value, which is reflected in lower costs, increased sales, higher productivity, or improved customer loyalty; and enterprise-readiness, meaning that a product or service scales and can be deployed and managed as necessary by IT pros.
Getting started with Paglo is simple, takes only five minutes, and is risk free. Customers sign up for an account online and download and run the open source Paglo Crawler on any desktop computer or server. The Crawler communicates with the networked devices and continually gathers data, which it then securely uploads to a private Paglo Account in a telco-grade datacenter. Each business has its own separate and secure account which is accessed from anywhere via a browser.
Being recognized as an InformationWeek Startup 50 winner affirms our leadership position in IT management SaaS and acknowledges the strong market demand for our services.
Learn more about Paglo and sign up here.
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This release was driven from your requests and our own desire to do more with Paglo. It’s amazing what happens when you actually use your own products – especially when you are working in an area like IT Management SaaS that is so fresh.
See, we use Paglo to monitor our own local network and our data center (for network management, server monitoring, and asset management) and we wanted to see data from multiple accounts on one Dashboard. We also want to specific custom groups and fields for our inventory. Now you can.
We have just released a ton of terrific new features that you get to take advantage of immediately – with no time of your own spent on software upgrades. That’s the benefit of using our leading On-demand IT Management platform.
You can read about some of the new functionality below and view screenshots (and in the Technical Blog), but I also wanted to tell you about a Limited Offer that expires on March 31 at 5pm PDT.
- The first 20 companies that convert to a paying account will receive 15% off a year’s subscription. Just call us at 650.858.3120 (ext. 1) to make sure that you can take advantage of this offer before it expires.
Now, back to all of the good new stuff. We have dramatically enhanced the Paglo service with the following great new features:
- New My Paglo home page
Get started and customize your account directly on the home page. Use the various panels to do things like set up common alerts and monitor your key systems.
- View data from multiple accounts in one Dashboard
This is ideal for MSPs and businesses with multiple sites or locations. You can now monitor data from as many accounts as you like all through one dashboard.
- Mac OS X details now displayed
Collect and visualize all of the rich information from your Macs. This includes information about the hardware, software packages, and configurations. View this info in the Inventory Management application or in your dashboards.
- Custom groups and fields
Organize your inventory any way that you want. For example, you can visualize the devices by type, location, business unit, or any other way that you desire. You can also add custom fields to track any data that you need to, like purchase price, help desk ticket number, maintenance expiration, etc.
Let us know if you have any questions or plan to upgrade before the end of the month to take advantage of the special offer.
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This post is as relevant for a leading IT Management SaaS company like Paglo as it is for any business. We know that you use Paglo to manage everything IT, but we like to share our thoughts in general.
I recently read a blog post on how the new economy is changing business and the rules that guide successful businesses and felt compelled to respond.
I am not sure the rules are any different. They remain quite simple.
1. Solve a real customer problem or create a new opportunity for them
2. Address a massive market
3. Rapidly refine
The major difference is that capital is much more expensive than it has been in the Internet era (figure that $1 a year ago is now worth at least $1.5, if you have it). There is much less of it and no one wants to part with it. [In company financing speak] Series A now looks like an Angel round in terms of the amount being raised (and Bs are looking like As).
So, in terms of capital, the world has changed, which means companies must.
1. Prove the technology works and can scale
2. Prove that customers will pay for it
3. Prove the market is large
4. Prove a highly efficient and repeatable acquisition model
The last point is critical and explains why traditional enterprise software and feet-on-the-street sales models are dead. There is no “reset” taking place, companies are just focusing on what’s important.
And the companies that are disrupting traditional enterprise software markets with on-demand services are the new economy.
[Note that for this reason and for many others most businesses are self-funded — capital infusions can help accelerate a business, but not create one that provides lasting value.]
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Massachusetts new Data Privacy Protection law (201 CMR 17.00 Standards for the Protection of Personal Information of Residents of the Commonwealth) is a tough new regulation that has widespread implications for MA and beyond.
It requires that all businesses that deal with personal information take immediate steps to safeguard their infrastructure and the sensitive data that they are collecting.
In particular, it mandates businesses:
- Define a comprehensive written information security program (WISP)
- Ensure any system that is connected to the Internet needs reasonably up-to-date firewall protection for files containing personal information; and operating system security patches to maintain the integrity of the personal information
- Enable you to keep reasonably up-to-date versions of system security agent software (including malware protection) and reasonably up-to-date security patches and virus definitions on your key systems
- Monitoring in place to alert you to the occurrence of unauthorized use of critical systems that provide access to personal information
We have received a number of requests on how Paglo can help businesses meet these new requirements, so we have added a Web page and are providing a FAQ below.
Please contact us at 650.858.3120 with any questions.
Frequently Asked Questions Regarding 201 CMR 17.00 Standards for the Protection of Personal Information of Residents of the Commonwealth Massachusetts
What can I do to ensure my machines are secure?
On any system that is connected to the Internet, you need to have reasonably up-to-date firewall protection for systems with files containing personal information; and operating system security patches to maintain the integrity of the data. Paglo can continually track these machines and alert you if the software has changed. You also need to have reasonably up-to-date versions of system security agent software (including malware protection) and reasonably up-to-date security patches and virus definitions. Once again, Paglo can inform you as to what patches have been applied to these machines and which machines have no anti-virus software installed.
Must my data security program be in writing? Yes, your information security program must be in writing. The scope and complexity of the document will vary depending on your resources, and the type of personal information you are storing or maintaining. But, everyone who stores or maintains personal information must have a written plan detailing the measures adopted to safeguard such information. Paglo provides a template for you to get started and can generate a complete inventory of all of your hardware and software for your review and inclusion in your policy statement.
Will I need to buy new computer equipment or new software? Your need for new computer equipment will depend on whether your current equipment meets the minimum requirements for running the software that will secure any electronic records containing personal information. The versions of the security and operating system that you currently have must be supported to receive security updates, and your computer equipment must meet the minimum requirements for running the needed software. If not, you will need new software, new hardware, or both. With Paglo you can inventory everything you have and run a simple report to determine which machines have been patched. You can even run a report to understand which machines have anti-virus running and which do not.
What is the extent of my “monitoring” obligation? The level of monitoring necessary to ensure your information security program is providing protection from unauthorized access to, or use of, personal information, and effectively limiting risks will depend largely on the nature of your business, your business practices, and the amount of personal information you are maintaining or storing. It will also depend on the form in which the information is kept and stored. Obviously, information stored as a paper record will demand different monitoring techniques from those applicable to electronically stored records. In the end, the monitoring that you put in place must be such that it is reasonably likely to reveal unauthorized access or use. Paglo continually monitors your environment and you can set up alerts to notify you if new devices are discovered on your network or if new software is installed.
Do I have to do an inventory of all my paper and electronic records? No, you do not have to inventory your records. However, you do need to identify which of your records contain personal information so that you can handle and protect that information in a manner that complies with the regulations. Most small companies already know which files contain this kind of information, and can quickly determine where in the company’s paper and electronic systems this information exists. Paglo can help you discover all of your assets and you can then determine if they contain any sensitive data.
Is everyone’s level of compliance going to be judged by the same standard? Both the statute and the regulations specify that compliance is to be judged taking into account the size and scope of your business, the resources that you have available to you, the amount of data you store, and the need for confidentiality. This will be judged on a case by case basis.
How much employee training do I need to do? There is no magic formula here. You will need to do enough training to ensure that the employees that will have access to personal information know what their obligations are regarding the protection of that information, as set forth in the regulations.
How do I decide who can have access to records containing personal information? The regulations require you to limit access to personal information only to those persons who are reasonably required to have access in order to accomplish a legitimate business purpose, or to comply with other state of federal regulations. Whatever is needed for compliance with state or federal laws/regulations is automatically authorized. Otherwise, you should identify your business needs, determine what tasks are reasonably necessary to satisfy those business needs, and identify who must have access to carry out those tasks. Paglo can also report on which users have administrative access to which groups which can give you a good handle on user privileges.
Do I need to hire a computer consultant to set up user identification protocols, secure access control measures, and firewalls? Businesses that store or maintain electronic records, and do not have in-house IT resources or regular access to providers of IT services, will probably need to hire someone to provide these services/resources, even if only on a one-time or part-time basis. Paglo can help introduce you to an IT consultant if you need assistance.
Disclaimer
Note that the information that is provided here is based on our interpretation of the new regulations and is not intended to be legal advice.
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We spend a lot of time talking with IT consultants and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and one thing is for certain — there is a massive movement towards expanding from break/fix services to ongoing monthly support.
The reasons are compelling and easy to understand:
- The MSP can provide more value than the traditional value added reseller (VAR) and often develops stronger relationships with the customer
- It’s easier to sell additional services and products if you are the “go-to-IT-guy”
- Best practices can be packaged and monetized across multiple clients
- Providing monthly services on a retained basis provides greater visibility into the future cash flow for the MSP and better aligns revenue with costs
- Everyone else is doing it.
It’s important to point out that there are plenty of VARs making good money by selling products like Cisco and delivering quality integration and other consulting services.
Now, so how many MSPs are there? And what is the total number of VARs? Here we have the benefit of a recent post by Joe Panettieri from MSPMentor.net.
He makes the following case:
- There are between 80,000 and 120,000 VARs/solutions providers
- Roughly 10 percent of those companies — 8,000 to 12,000 — have moved into the managed services market
- Roughly 10 percent of those aspiring and estabished MSPs — or roughly 800 to 1,200 companies — are wildly successful managed service providers.
He believes that only about 1 percent of all North American VARs are truly thriving and generating explosive growth as MSPs.
I think that it depends on how you define “thriving.” We spoke with a VAR today with 80 small and mid-sized businesses that was doing just fine. The owner is moving more of his business towards an MSP model and signed up for Paglo.
He has a few thousand nodes to manage and had been looking at the traditional enterprise software MSP vendors. He thought that the quote that he received for $12,000 to get started was outrageous. So did we. Not to mention that he would have to deploy servers everywhere.
So, if you are making the transition, we applaud you and welcome you to get started with Paglo and our Partner Impact Program.
We are happy to share the risk with you as there are no set up fees. And because the Paglo service is IT Management SaaS (aka on-demand IT Management) there is no hardware to deploy — at your client’s site or yours. And pricing starts at $1 device per month.
Give us a call as we would be happy to talk about how we are seeing other VARs make the transition to an MSP and thrive.
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We just released our newest application for your use — bringing you detailed NetFlow traffic visualization and analysis.
Paglo announced today a new network management application with an interactive, Flash-based display of the network and traffic patterns. This was developed and released based on the strong customer demand that we received for greater insight into network traffic use for troubleshooting and planning purposes.
You can view a number of screenshots of the new NetFlow application in our screenshot library.
The application collects detailed data via NetFlow, a network protocol developed by Cisco Systems for collecting IP traffic information. You can now automatically discover and store all of the IT data necessary to manage your network and infrastructure through one complete IT management SaaS platform.
The new network monitoring and alerting functionality provides businesses with many great new features and cost savings benefits including:
- Monitors network traffic by capturing flow data from devices that support NetFlow
- Automatically captures and stores the data and identifies which users, applications and protocols are consuming the most bandwidth
- Provides rich visualization of what’s happening through an interactive, traffic flow map and detailed charts and tables
- Accelerates troubleshooting network congestion and pinpointing the cause of network brown-outs through the ability to drilldown and search on any data
- Eliminates the need for onsite storage which ensures immediate access to trend data for optimal network use and informed capacity planning
- Identifies suspicious traffic patterns and excessive bandwidth utilization for security, compliance and auditing purposes
- Proactively monitors and alerts on Quality of Service (QoS) metrics to verify that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are being met
The new network management application is included at no additional cost with the Paglo service. There is no hardware required or complex software to set up. The open source Paglo Crawler performs as a NetFlow collector and securely sends the collected data to an index for analysis. Each business has its own secure Paglo Search Index that keeps the information completely separate and private from every other user. Existing customers can take advantage of the new functionality immediately.
And the positive feedback is already in. You may be interested in reading what the following publications have to say:
Sign up now at no cost to try it out.
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The current economic climate is affecting every IT department, and each and every one of us is looking for ways to survive and thrive. With this in mind, we wanted to share a few thoughts on how customers of Paglo are getting by.
Consolidating software products – eliminate maintenance fees
A number of customers that we have recently spoken with are rationalizing what tools they need, so they can eliminate the ones that they are no longer using and stop paying unnecessary maintenance fees. The math is easy on this one. For example, if you have purchased $50,000 in tools, you are likely paying at least $7500 in annual fees to keep them up-to-date and to access technical support. In one recent situation, a large company with thousands of devices actually eliminated multiple tools, purchased Paglo, and is paying less than they were in maintenance. They now have a complete IT Management SaaS platform to manage everything IT. If you are interested in an Excel calculator to analyze your own situation, let us know.
Tap outsourced services
There continues to be a growing number of devices, applications, and knowledge workers with Internet access at just about every company. But the unfortunate reality of IT staff reductions makes managing all of this increasingly difficult and stressful. Many of the companies that we speak with are using IT consultants to help with special projects or to support the ongoing 24×7 monitoring responsibility as a first-line-of-support. And considering that nearly half of all Paglo customers are IT consultants / MSPs we would be happy to help you make a local connection if you need one.
Identify unused assets and software
If you knew what you had and what you were using, you could probably better put the resources to use. Many customers are using Paglo to discover and track what they have. The Paglo Crawler automatically finds all of the software installed on your computers and servers (without needing to deploy any agents). And you can drill down for all of the relevant details such as vendor names, versions, and installation dates. By taking a snapshot of what is going on at any given time you can immediately save money by reallocating your resources.
Hopefully these suggestions are of value. If you have other thoughts on what is working for you, let me know.
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We just upgraded the Paglo IT Management SaaS platform and wanted to tell you what has improved. You may have noticed some of the cosmetic changes like new icons for applications, dashboards, and drill-down capabilities, but we also made a ton of additional enhancements.
If Paglo seems even faster than it was before, that’s because all Paglo Query Language (PQL) queries are now 20 – 30 percent faster. The search engine for IT just went from fast to turbo fast.
You can now also manage your Paglo Crawler through the Crawler application which is now installed by default in every account. You can use the application to schedule how the Crawler gathers information from your key assets, manage its configuration, and track its data gathering activity.
We have also added the following significant improvements based on your requests:
- Timezone support. Users can now choose their own timezone under Settings → User Settings. Time-series charts will then be shown in the local time zone. Timestamps formatted using the PQL format() function will also be shown in the local time zone.
- New PQL syntax capabilities:
- resolve_address() function which can find the DNS name for an IP address.
- uncorrelated sub-queries using the IN operator.
- Added ability to drop indexes (drop index on /foo/bar), and to query the current indexes (select * from #indexes).
Let us know what additional upgrades you would like to see and we will make it so.
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We have heard some compelling stories over the last few weeks from IT consultants as to why they have selected Paglo.
And just today a consultant told one of our sales people that our IT search and visualization functionality blew him away and that he would save over 70 percent using Paglo vs. the least expensive traditional enterprise software MSP platform that he was looking out. And this was even before he had to think about deploying servers into every client environment and running a server at his central location if he went with the bloated enterprise software deployment.
He signed up on the spot for Paglo after reviewing the other vendor options for months. We are starting to see this a lot, now that the word is getting out – Paglo is the search engine for IT. It is a complete IT Management SaaS platform for managing everything IT.
Tomorrow morning we are announcing a new Paglo release with optimized functionality for MSPs, consultants, resellers, VARs, and other related companies that are in the business of managing multiple IT environments. You may want to read about the new release and Paglo Partner Impact Program.
The program is FREE to join and open to MSPs, VARs, resellers, and any other related consultants worldwide who want to expand their remote monitoring and management capabilities and reduce their operating costs. There are no minimum commitments or start-up fees and pricing starts at $1 US per managed device per month.
The Paglo Impact Partner Program provides IT consultants and MSPs access to the many features and benefits of Paglo including:
- Complete IT Management platform to remotely manage everything IT (e.g. asset discovery, server monitoring, network management, configuration change tracking, etc.)
- Paglo is multi-tenant and allows consultants to manage all clients and data through one master account via a Web interface
- Allow clients to directly log in as well, but limit what they can view (and only allow them to view their data, of course)
- Automatically discover and track all networked devices (Windows, Unix/Linux, and Mac)
- No hardware to deploy at your client’s site or at your office
- Proactive notification before something breaks through the setting of alerts
- Start monitoring what’s happening in minutes – no hardware to purchase or complex software to set up
- Dedicated Paglo account manager and priority support
There are no set-up fees or long term commitments to get started and the first 30 days are no risk. You can also upgrade, downgrade, or cancel at anytime
If you have any questions about the program please send us an email at sales@paglo.com or call us at 650.858.3120.
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A majority of network administrators are also directly involved with systems management, according to a recent survey by the analyst firm Enterprise Management Association
Nearly three-quarters of the survey respondents signaled that systems management is an area of direct involvement or that their jobs required required system management domain expertize. This was higher than options such as security and change/configuration management.
The fact that those who are responsible for the network are also managing core system infrastructure is an important insight and one that we have also been noticing at Paglo over the last few years.
This flattening of traditional IT silos reflects the fact that applications are really what matter and the users of those applications rely on all of the infrastructure to perform well to effectively use them. This also means that IT management systems need to automatically collect and help administrators search and visualize all of their IT data (from server performance metrics, to network traffic, to user info, etc.).
This was a guiding design principle for us at Paglo and why a search engine for IT is a radical idea that makes perfect sense.
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We had a great 2008 and are looking forward to a truly fantastic 2009. We have many of you to thank for what we have been able to accomplish including:
- Bringing “Search for IT” to organizations everywhere
- Launching the first complete IT Management SaaS platform
- Supporting thousands of companies and hundreds of thousands of devices on the service
- Helping hundreds of MSPs, VARs, resellers, and other consultants reduce their operating costs and grow their businesses
- And recently, new office digs in lovely downtown Menlo Park, CA
And we can guarantee that 2009 will be even more exciting.
Look for a number of major product and partner announcements in the next few months and new functionality being added to Paglo faster than you can call your favorite enterprise software vendor and request an enhancement.
We were going to generate a list of top ten happenings in 2008, but we thought that we would just share some of our favorite “best of” links from the last few weeks instead, for your enjoyment.
We hope that 2009 will be a great year for you as well and that you prosper with equal parts health and happiness.
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We do not often cover the day-to-day happenings at Paglo, so we thought that we would share some of what we heard yesterday on a call with Forrester Research. If you have not heard of Forrester Research, they are one of the leading industry analyst research firms.
We had the pleasure of meeting with Peter O’Neill. He is based out of Europe and covers IT Management. You can find his bio here
It was one of the more lively analyst discussions that we have had lately. We demoed the Paglo service and he shared some of the findings from his report (which we have referred to in the past), including:
- The fact that their recent market forecast model for IT management SaaS shows that SaaS will grow from making up just over 1% of the $18 billion IT management software market in 2008 to 10% by 2013, by which time many of the brand SaaS providers could be well established.
- He also noted that Forrester is more actively looking at the space due to an increased interest in IT management SaaS from Forrester clients.
- When the discussion turned to the lack of IT management product innovation coming from the legacy IT management vendors, our ears perked up. We know that they are actively trying to figure out what on-demand services and cloud-based computing means to their future, but it was interesting to have this echoed back to us.
We will continue to share more insights into the discussions that we have with leading thinkers in the IT Search Engine and IT Management SaaS markets.
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Another report was just published on the rapid growth of SaaS. Nine out of ten companies plan to grow their use of software-as-a-service (SaaS) in the next year, according to a survey by the industry-analyst firm Gartner.
More than one third of respondents (37%) to their recent survey plan to replace on-premises software with SaaS to drive down total cost of ownership (TCO), Gartner found.
The following reasons were provided as key drivers for SaaS adoption.
- cost-effectiveness
- ease of deployment
- other major drivers included replacing on-premises solutions that had not met performance expectation, or changes in sourcing strategy.
We hear this every day when we speak with customers about Paglo’s IT Management SaaS platform, so it does not surprise us.
More and more customers are turning to our IT Search Engine to solve their asset discovery, inventory management, network monitoring, and user problems and ensure their infrastructure runs optimally. Because we are on-demand, they get going with zero hassle and without the costs of deploying traditional enterprise software.
Additional details on the Gartner report can be found in this article
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It’s been a couple of months since we introduced you to “Bill the IT Guy”- the under appreciated IT genius who saves the office from the evils of squid, modern technology, and sometimes just from themselves. So, we are pleased to bring you our second installment of the series.
In this episode; “Gadget Madness!” the office is gripped with gadget fever as the ultra-cool, ultra-chic Pear Computer Company and its ‘famous’ CEO, Steve Bobs, introduces the new Pear Thingy. The office staff naturally finds it totally irresistible and rushes out to be the first to buy one. But there is a sinister purpose behind the Thingy, and the office soon becomes part of Steve Bob’s evil plans to rule the world. Bill ingeniously rushes in to save the day and all of mankind.
This episode is best described as an Apple Gadget Fanbody Parody. So just take a few minutes and watch it!
Bill the IT Guy is produced, written, animated, and voiced by Paglo art director, Seth Arp, and illustrated by his wife, Lindy Groening.
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If you are reading this in your Paglo account, the following is obvious to you. SaaS IT Management or IT Management SaaS (you decide what you call it) makes tons of sense.
As a customer told me yesterday “I would be an idiot not to sign up. Your automated asset discovery and search engine for IT changes the game.”
That was a serious statement about the value of being able to manage everything IT without having to deploy hardware or complicated software. And more importantly, it spoke volumes about being able to manage everything in your environment from the computers, to servers, to network, to users all in one place.
Well, the highly-regarded analyst firm Forrester is now weighing into the discussion.
The following is exerted from the article that was just published.
“Forrester has developed a market forecast model for IT management SaaS that shows that SaaS will grow from making up just over 1% of the $18 billion IT management software market in 2008 to 10% by 2013, by which time many of the brand SaaS providers could be well established.
Based on increased interest in IT management SaaS from Forrester clients — who are typically at larger enterprises — plus direct feedback from the SaaS operators, Forrester anticipates that enterprises with more than 1,000 employees will account for half of the SaaS installations in 2009."
Wow, that’s a real testament to the vision of all of the companies who have already adopted Paglo and our SaaS IT Management service and the future of the market in general.
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