Ottawa-based N-able Technologies, a remote network management software company has extended its product’s features by adding incident event management.
The company said it will release its Security Event Manager next month, a dashboard module that plugs into the company’s N-central and N-vison
network control software for service providers.
At the same time, the company also announced it is enhancing its partner training and resources program.
Security Event Manager collects analyzes and correlates security events on servers and desktops from almost any vendor’s anti-virus and network intrusion detection software and puts the results in an on-screen dashboard for easy viewing, said Derik Belair, N-able’s vice-president of marketing.
The module works across any platform, he added.
With it network management providers using N-able’s main applications will be able to sell event management as an added service, Belair said.
Other vendors such as Symantec Corp. include an event manager in their applications, although many are configured to only work with their software. But N-able is hoping the event manager will distinguish its remote management applications from competitors.
“”We don’t want to re-invent security. Our goal is to make them work together,”” said Belair.
“”The biggest weakness with security events is no-one looks at (application) log files daily. They wait for a problem to occur. We look at the log files, and let the system administrator set what he wants to be notified on.””
“”Out of the box it works with standard applications from leading intrusion detection, anti-virus and firewall vendors,”” said Belair. “”But you can customize to work with specific infrastructure you have at your location.”” That work can either be done by the customer or by N-able’s staff or its partners by, in part, pointing the event manager to the application’s log file.
“”This add-on will just increase our clients’ trust in us,”” said Keenley Side-Richter, assistant data centre manager at Nerds On Site, a London, Ont. service provider and support VAR. The company uses N-central for remote network monitoring.
He also said the promise of event management was one of the features that enticed the company into becoming an N-able partner.
N-able’s platinum partners will get the event manager free, while gold-level partners will pay around $5,000 for the dashboard. It won’t be available to silver-level partners.
The company estimates it has 270 partners around the world – about 50 of whom are Canadian – and most are platinum partners.
To help them sell managed services, new offerings were announced this week including business training and marketing material. Initially the company’s partner program centred around the number of licences and tech support partners receive, Belair said.
“”Most of the partners we sign up were at one point a big hardware VAR,”” said Belair. “”They need to understand how to sell services.””
Platinum partners will receive unlimited one-one-one training and marketing material created by N-able. Gold partners can buy training and get marketing templates, which they can use to create e-mail and brochures. Silver partners can only see N-able’s marketing material and only receive on-line training.