WHITEPAPER

5 ways to create superior IT value

for your SMB or mid-sized
businesses in 2010
Practical tactics and strategies for contributing measurably
to the bottom line – in good times and bad

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION AND
OBJECTIVES…………………………………………………………………………
…...#
TOP BUSINESS PRIORITIES FOR
2010………………………………………………………………………….#
BUSINESS PRIORITY #1: BUSINESS PROCESS
IMPROVEMENT……………………………………..#
BUSINESS PRIORITY #2: REDUCING ENTERPRISE
COSTS………………………………………………#
BUSINESS PRIORITY #3: INCREASING THE USE OF
ANALYTICS……………………………………..#
BUSINESS PRIORITY #4: IMPROVING ENTERPRISE
WORKFORCE EFFECTIVENESS…………#
BUSINESS PRIORITY #5: ATTRACTING AND RETAINING
CUSTOMERS……………………………#
REMOTE MONITORING AND
MANAGEMENT……………………………………………………………….#
CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………….#

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INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES
According to Gartner, “CIOs are eying relatively flat IT budgets this
year.” Budgets are expected to rise on average a modest 1.3 percent
1
and IT spending in 2010 will be on a par with 2005 levels . Similarly, the
United Nations has forecast a “fragile and uneven economic recovery in
2010 from the worst recession since World War II, with a global growth
2
rate of 2.4 percent.” That’s the good news.

The bad news for IT departments of small to medium sized businesses

(SMBs) and midmarket enterprises is that they will experience
continuing pressure to streamline their operations and reduce costs. For
many this will sound tiresomely familiar. However, IT is not alone: most
departments have seen their budgets frozen or slashed to ensure the
viability of the business. As the economy rebounds and budgets are
loosened, all departments can expect a higher than normal level of
scrutiny on requests for additional resources. For IT departments this
may be daunting. Many are seen as an expense or cost center rather
than a high value, strategic contributor to the enterprise’s success. As a
result, IT budgets are often established by senior management or a CIO
using an arbitrary percentage of operating expenditures, in good times
and bad.

Yet, the enterprise will continue to face attacks from a variety of

security threats. Eventually, new branch offices will be added, with
routers, firewalls, servers, employee workstations, and other
infrastructure equipment. All of this will need to be managed,
monitored, and maintained, often 24/7. In short, demands on help desk
and IT support services will inevitably increase – and budgets likely will
not.

The purpose of this whitepaper is to provide resource strapped IT

departments of SMBs and midsize enterprises with practical strategies
for demonstrating superior IT value – and to thrive in this demanding
environment.

Specifically this white paper will:

 Map IT strategies to the top five business priorities in 2010

 Demonstrate how maximum IT value can be achieved through
automation, cost reductions and savings, managing distributed
architectures, improved resource utilization, customized C-level
performance reports, high availability and desktop management,
and enhanced enterprise agility
 Show how an integrated, centrally managed remote monitoring
and management platform can support business priorities and
deliver superior IT value immediately

1
Credit: Gartner, January 2010, based on a poll of 1,586 chief information officers.
2
Credit: United Nations annual economic forecast, a 176 page report released January
2010.

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 IT DEPARTMENTS CAN The ideas and strategies presented
in this white paper are based on the
MOVE IN LOCKSTEP WITH
ongoing work by N-able
THE TOP BUSINESS Technologies with over 2,000
PRIORITY Managed Service Provider Partners
(MSPs) and IT departments
Automation is a key to worldwide. N-able is a recognized
business process leader in IT automation solutions
improvement and can with a proven ability to reduce IT
streamline or replace many costs, improve network performance
labour intensive, manual and increase productivity.
processes such as:
This white paper will be invaluable to
 Updating patches any IT manager or director, providing
 Resetting passwords services to a 100 to 1,000 seat SMB
 Running defrags
or midsize enterprise, and who
 Application deployments
wants practical strategies for cost
 Performing asset
effectively improving their IT value.
management and updating
software on employees’
systems,
 Endpoint security TOP BUSINESS PRIORITIES
 Regulatory compliance
FOR 2010
An IT department can dramatically
improve its perceived value to the enterprise by directly supporting and
aligning its strategies with business priorities. According to Gartner, the
top five business priorities for 2010 appear in the first column of figure 1
below. These priorities translate into concrete business drivers if not a
battle cry for IT departments.

In our work with IT departments and MSPs around the world, N-able has
mapped specific IT strategies for addressing these business priorities
and delivering superior IT value to the mid-size businesses. These IT
strategies are summarized in the second column of figure 1.

Figure 1: The Top Business Priorities for 2010

Business priorities for 20103 IT Strategy

1. Business process
improvement
2. Reducing enterprise costs
3. Increasing the use of
information/analytics
4. Improving enterprise
workforce effectiveness
5. Attracting and retaining
customers
 Improved resource utilization and
efficiencies through IT automation
 Cost reduction and savings
 Customizable C-level performance
reports for demonstrating IT ROI
 Improved IT services to remote users
and integrated desktop management
 Enabling enterprise agility through
an optimized, highly available
infrastructure

3
Source: Gartner EXP (January 2010). The left column shows the business priorities for
2010; the right column shows specific IT strategies proposed by N-able Technologies.

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Each IT strategy has specific challenges that will be briefly discussed in
this whitepaper.

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 THE FINANCIAL BENEFITS OF
AN AUTOMATION STRATEGY
The following is a realistic,
hypothetical scenario that
dramatizes the financial
benefits of automation:
 Cost of IT help desk
resource: $60 per hour
 Conservative savings per
device from an automation
solution: $10 to $20 per
device
 Size of SMB: 200 devices
 Total enterprise savings
resulting from an
automation platform in an
SMB with 200 devices:
$120,000 to $240,000 per
year
While hypothetical these
conservative figures are
consistent with N-able’s
experience with partners and
enterprises.
Cost savings go hand-in-hand
with dramatic improvements in
IT technician utilization and the
ability to do more with less:
 An automation platform
easily boosts the number of
devices that can be
managed per technician
from 125 (to 150) to 500+:
a 300% productivity
improvement.
BUSINESS PRIORITY #1:
BUSINESS PROCESS
IMPROVEMENT
Motivated by a global marketplace,
increased commoditization of both
products and services, and growing
regulatory compliance, businesses of
all sizes have scrutinized their
business processes with the goal of
finding more efficient ways to do
business. Redesigning, optimizing
and automating business process
are central ideas for achieving new
efficiencies and realizing business
goals.
Business process improvement
through automation is also an area
where IT departments can move in
lockstep with this top business
priority – if not lead by example. The
key is to automate the right type of
routine tasks to realize new
efficiencies, achieve a systematic
approach, and improve technician
productivity. For example, an
automation platform can replace
many tedious manual in-house
processes including:
 Updating patches, resetting
passwords, running defrags,
application deployments, performing
asset management and updating
software on employees’ systems,
endpoint security, and regulatory
compliance – with auditable logs –
and many other tasks.

The importance of IT automation is punctuated by the number of

desktops or computers that can be managed per help desk employee. N-
able’s experience with IT departments and MSPs shows that an average
IT technician can effectively manage about 125 to 150 devices without
an automation solution. Contrast this with the operational reality of
many SMB and mid-size businesses that have 100 to 1000 employees.
For this size of business, particularly if any infrastructure growth is
anticipated, automation is critical to an IT department’s ability to
maintain or improve upon service levels. N-able’s work with MSPs in
particular shows that by automating tasks and processes related to
network monitoring and management, an IT service provider can easily
manage 500 devices or more per technician.

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An automation platform enables IT departments to deliver superior IT
value by:

 Reducing or eliminating time wasting visits to employee sites/desks

 Cutting the number of Help Desk calls
 Reduce operational/maintenance costs while adding more services
 Speeding-up response times to employees
 Managing more devices without adding technicians
 Freeing-up time and IT resources to proactively plan
 Maintaining consistent, higher-quality services
 Increasing end user (employee) satisfaction
 Allocating IT resources and work more efficiently

More than anything, IT automation is a strategy for automating manual

processes, eliminating or reducing the number of nuisance calls, and
lessening the cost of dealing with calls that are received.

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Questions to ask
The key to a successful IT automation platform that realizes these
important benefits is one that integrates remote control, remote
monitoring, remote management (including desktop management),
and reporting into a single integrated tool set. However, before leaping
on the automation bandwagon, the enterprise should ask a number of
critical questions to objectively assess potential IT automation solutions
including:

 What tasks should really be automated?

 How much effort will be required to deploy and integrate any new
tools into the existing IT infrastructure?
 How many different tools will be required to automate different
processes?
 Will these tools realize promised efficiencies across a distributed
architecture?
 How easy will it be to learn and use the tool(s)?
 Can these tools be managed in a centralized way?
 Will these tools quantify and report on where IT resources were
invested and with what results?
 How much money will these tools really save?

BUSINESS PRIORITY #2:

THE HIGH COST OF OVER
LICENSING
REDUCING ENTERPRISE COSTS

 Many enterprises are over-

Periods of economic contraction put
licensed and paying for pressure on companies to re-
software that sits idle evaluate every aspect of their
business with the overriding goal of
 The underlying problem, reducing enterprise costs. Cost
and a significant challenge reduction can occur in one of two
for IT departments, is the ways: “hard” cost savings or “soft”
inability to effectively track cost reduction or avoidance.
and manage deployed
assets
Hard cost savings focus on tangible,
 An automatic asset bottom line reductions of expenses
management and software that can be tracked on the P&L. For
tracking tool enables IT to IT departments, deploying the right
immediately add significant kind of IT automation solution is one
value proven strategy for realizing new
process efficiencies that measurably
reduce the cost of in-house services
and maintenance costs while
improving resource utilization. In
addition, automation drives down the cost of IT ownership through
improved network and systems management.

In comparison, cost reduction strategies minimize, delay or avoid an

expense that impacts the bottom line. Software licensing and
consolidation are two concrete strategies that enable IT departments to
support a cost reduction business priority and add immediate IT value.

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Over-licensing adds costs
Most software licenses incur maintenance or renewal fees – and as such
they have a long-term financial impact on the business. For example,
technical support and upgrades for software are typically charged to
SMBs as a percentage of the licensing fee. This can vary between 10 and
25 percent of license fees. Over time, these software expenses add-up
on the balance ledger. Despite these recurring costs, many companies
find they are over licensed – effectively they are paying for licenses to sit
idle or unused.

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 THE PROBLEM WITH POINT Key business drivers for over
SOLUTIONS licensing
Typically over licensing happens for
Many corporate IT professionals two reasons. First, a reduction in
have tackled IT automation by headcount during an economic
securing a variety of individual contraction can quickly lead to over
midmarket tools for various licensing. Second, fear of license
tasks. This can lead to a compliance from major software
proliferation of individual “point vendors has driven many
solutions”.
organizations to err on the side of
Generally point solutions:
caution and overbuy software. In
both cases, management complexity
 Add complexity to is further magnified when the
planning, managing, and enterprise has different releases and
governing the IT renewal dates of the same software
infrastructure or tool. The underlying problem, and
 Cannot be integrated into a a major challenge for many IT
single flexible, easy to use departments, is the inability to
solution effectively track and manage
 Do not give IT visibility on network assets deployed across the
all devices and applications
mid-size business.
 Result in vendor “finger
pointing” when things go
wrong Asset management
The key to ensuring an organization
Consolidating around a single, is not over-purchasing software
integrated solution is a key IT licenses – and paying more than it
strategy for: should – is through an automatic
 Reducing costs – and software based asset and license
realizing improved management tracking tool. In
efficiencies and superior
addition to avoiding costs from over
productivity
licensing, introducing an effective
 Introducing centralized
accountability asset management strategy enables
 Simplifying technological IT departments to provide superior
complexity, training and value to the enterprise through:
maintenance requirements
 Improved corporate
transparency and governance
 Reduced cost of support
 Increased network security
 Improved budget and upgrade planning

As well, an IT strategy for discovering and tracking all software installed

across the network ensures the enterprise will:

 Meet legal obligations with respect to managing licenses

 Know the number of licenses that are owned with all software
packages
 Automatically receive notifications when the enterprise
exceeds or approaches the licensing limit

Consolidating achieves savings and superior efficiencies

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In the same way that many businesses have a proliferation of unused
requirements software licenses, many also deploy a number of “point
solutions,” particularly antivirus, firewall, anti-spam, and spyware tools.

Efficiently managing multiple tools can be hugely challenging and time

consuming. They add management complexity and in most cannot be
integrated into a single, flexible solution. Consolidating around a single,
integrated solution is a key IT strategy for reducing costs – and realizing
improved efficiencies and superior productivity.

Consolidation enables the IT department to replace a number of tools or

point solutions with a single network monitoring and management tool
that can perform various tasks related to event logs, networking, policy
management, patch management, back-up, endpoint security, and
others.

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CONSOLIDATING DRIVES
STANDARDIZATION AND
SAVINGS
By consolidating and integrating
multiple point products into a
single, centrally controlled,
remote monitoring and
management platform, IT
departments can:
 Standardize endpoint
security applications
deployment, configuration
and management across
the entire enterprise
 Train IT technicians on one
tool to realize important
new operational
efficiencies
 Significantly reduce the
time and cost of delivering
high value IT services,
particularly in a distributed
environment.
Key requirements for an IT
consolidation strategy
The desired requirements for an IT
solution that reduces costs by
consolidating point solutions – while
saving time and simplifying
management complexity – include:
 Centralized management and
monitoring – the ability to monitor
and manage all networks, devices
and users from one, integrated
management console
 True platform approach –
allowing IT to add solutions and
applications that are needed today
with the flexibility to grow in the
future
BUSINESS PRIORITY #3:
INCREASING THE USE OF
ANALYTICS

Analytics is the key to data driven

decision making. Having the ability
to capture, analyze, and report on
the performance of the network infrastructure is how IT can directly
support this business priority and in so doing, implement a strategy for
adding value and demonstrating ROI to senior management.

Delivering on this strategy means IT Professionals need fingertip access

to performance data on a wide range of network and operational issues.
Examples of reports that deliver this type of critical information include:

 Application availability – an overall assessment of service

availability by device
 Asset discovery – automatically provides a summary of
discovered assets on a network
 Capacity planning – identifies devices approaching utilization
limits
 Downtime cost impact report – demonstrates the costs
associated with a service downtime for a given period
 Incident report – a list of all incidents and escalations and
acknowledgements in addition to resolution time information
 License compliance – a list of all licensed software packages
monitored by the license compliance service within the
enterprise, the quantity of each that is installed, and the
number of defined licenses
 Patch level management report – provides a patch level
analysis by status or type for selected devices

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  Security incident summary – a summary of all security-related
events detected
 And many others

These and many other types of reports not only provide crucial data to
support decision making, they make it easier for IT to audit and track
assets that require hardware and software upgrades – and ultimately
they boost management confidence in the IT department.

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 IT PERFORMANCE REPORTS
The ability to quickly gather and
report on vital business
information is a critical part of
an IT strategy for supporting
business priorities.
Strategic and technical reports
enable IT to quickly demonstrate
the performance of the IT
infrastructure and can also be
used to maintain compliance
with internal SLAs and
regulatory requirements.
C-Level Reporting
Tough economies put all senior
resources – the VP of Finance, VP of
Human Resources, the CTO and
others – under pressure to
demonstrate the ROI of their team
or business unit to the enterprise’s
profitability. Increasingly, these
stakeholders need and expect their
IT infrastructure to give them
customized reports on key areas of
the network that directly impact
their productivity, often using real-
time data.

Types of valuable IT The ability to generate customized C-

performance reports
include:
 Application compliance by
application and device
 Availability reports
 Customer devices
 Detailed asset information
 Executive summaries
 Security incidents
 Notifications sent
 Patch status
 System audits
 Windows Event Log
level reports on a demand basis
enables IT to add significant strategic
value. For example:
 VPs of Sales or Marketing may
want to know if the Customer
Relationship Management System
(CRM) is up and running.
 Chief Financial Officers (CFOs)
may want to know about capacity
planning and what the projected
expenditures are for the next year.
 Chief Technology Officers
(CTOs) will want to know about
trending, such as firewall incidents,
audit and security information.

Easy-to-read, scorecard style

executive summaries that deliver this type of customized information
allows IT to help senior executives better understand IT performance
data. For the midsize business, these reports are also invaluable for
making better informed capacity planning decisions.

In good economic times and bad, the IT department will increasingly

need lightening-speed access to performance reports with hard info to
substantiate the status of the infrastructure, demonstrate their IT value,
and to get sign-off on future IT budget requests.

More than anything, performance reports give IT visibility into the entire
infrastructure, enabling them to become true business managers rather
than technicians.

BUSINESS PRIORITY #4: IMPROVING WORKFORCE

EFFECTIVENESS

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Workforce effectiveness interventions cover a wide range of activities
that ultimately strive to improve employee engagement and
productivity. IT can play a significant and strategically important
supporting role in enhancing employee productivity by:

 Improving IT services to all users – including remote users in branch

offices and in particular mobile/roaming users
 Ensuring highly secure, always available, 24/7 Internet-speed
business services for all applications, desktops, servers, switches,
routers and printers

An Internet based tool with a single console that provides centralized

remote control and remote monitoring is optimal for delivering this
type of IT value, particularly to small satellite offices and a mobile
workforce.

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NUISANCE CALLS TAKE THE
LION’S SHARE OF IT TIME
Up to 75 percent of IT’s time is
taken up attending to desktop
related “nuisance” calls.
Top nuisance problems reported
by IT departments of SMBs and
midsize enterprises that N-able
works with around the globe
include:
Better service to remote and mobile
users
This type of approach enables IT to
reduce or eliminate the time it
spends “in the field” while speeding-
up and improving service delivery.
Without remote access to device in
the field, IT is handicapped in its
ability to implement corrective
strategies to secure, safeguard,
troubleshoot and effect corrective
action.

 Resetting passwords Desktop management is a powerful

 VPN remote connection
problems
 Laptop boot problem
 Slow running PCs
 Desktop icons don’t appear
 Email complaints
 Weird backgrounds
 Low virtual memory
 Taskbar has disappeared,
 And many others
productivity enabler
Integrated desktop management is
also of critical importance to
enterprise workforce effectiveness.
Attending to desktop issues is a huge
sinkhole for most IT departments,
gobbling up as much as 75 percent
of their help technician’s time. Top
nuisance problems reported by IT
departments of SMBs and
enterprises that N-able works with
around the globe include:

 Resetting passwords, VPN

remote connection problems, laptop
boot problem, slow running PCs, desktop icons don’t appear, email
complaints, weird backgrounds, low virtual memory, the taskbar
has disappeared, and many other desktop related problems.

This list barely scratches the surface of issues and complaints that keep
IT resources scrambling from dawn to dusk, if not working around the
clock in highly distributed environments with many satellite or branch
offices. A strong desktop management strategy will enable IT
departments to eliminate many of these problems, maximize technician
utilization rates while simultaneously improving workforce productivity
and IT as a service.

Five things to look for in a desktop management solution

Critical requirements of an integrated desktop management solution for
IT departments are patch management, endpoint security, asset
management, remote control, and monitoring. When these features are
managed from a single comprehensive console, IT is empowered with
the ability to:

 Remotely monitor the entire network and all devices – to deliver

higher levels of proactive service

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 Provide endpoint security with anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-malware,
personal firewall and host intrusion prevention – for desktops, and
other devices such as laptops and servers
 Automate a number of desktop related activities including cache
clean-up and the distribution of software, upgrades, and patches

A web-based integrated desktop management strategy with remote

monitoring and control effectively frees-up IT resources to manage
hundreds of devices from any location in the world – home, the airport,
a satellite office, or wherever you need to go. This not only improves
technician utilization rates but enables IT to provide superior service
levels and resolve problems to ensure optimal workforce productivity.

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“JUST DO IT”…
Many businesses have put
critical purchases on hold
pending an economic
turnaround. New devices,
software, and upgrades such as
Windows 7 are all part of a
growing backlog of legitimate
and in some cases desperately
needed purchases.
When the economy does turn, IT
will be one of the first
departments to feel the
pressure – and the last to be
offered additional budget or
new headcounts. Patience will
be thin for delays when the
embargo is lifted and the
business starts to grow. IT will
be under the gun to “just do it.”
By taking proactive steps now to
ensure an optimized, “always-
on” IT infrastructure, IT
departments can better equip
their resources to:
 Meet pent-up demand for
IT related investments
 Proactively support
anticipated SMB growth
with existing IT resources
 Support customer
acquisition and retention
through enhanced
enterprise agility
downtime, everyone will agree that it is expensive regardless of the size
of the business. At minimum, downtime means lost employee
productivity. In worst case scenarios, downtime translates directly into
reduced service levels to customers – and lost revenue from sales.
BUSINESS PRIORITY #5:
ATTRACTING AND RETAINING
CUSTOMERS
New and current customers are the
lifeblood of any business. Satisfying
customer needs at a profit is the
overriding goal of any SMB or
enterprise. While IT departments
typically do not interact directly with
end customers, it plays a crucial role
by optimizing the enterprise
infrastructure for optimal
responsiveness, reliability, and
service delivery.
Enterprise agility supports customer
acquisition
In this way, IT department directly
supports client acquisition and
retention by ensuring highly secure,
always available, 24/7 Internet-
speed business services for all
applications, desktops, servers,
switches, routers and printers. These
are the indispensible tools and
services that the entire enterprise
counts on to be agile, efficient, and
ultimately highly competitive in all
client facing engagements.
Problems occur when IT department
are forced into a reactive, “break-fix”
mode of service delivery. When this
happens, technicians are deployed
unpredictably in a kneejerk reaction
to resolve unanticipated problems.
While it is hard to quantify

How to maximize enterprise agility

The IT strategy for maximizing enterprise agility – and ensuring an
optimal infrastructure for acquiring and retaining customers involves
the following:

Single view of the enterprise network

 Having a 24 x 7 pulse on critical network devices
 Ability to see things fail before the rest of the company does
 Full visibility and responsibility for the network

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Efficient management of distributed architectures
 The ability to remotely support multiple office locations
 Access to critical network devices

Leveraging IT automation to become proactive

 Being strategic and proactive vs. fighting fires
 Automating mundane, labour intensive tasks
 Effectively managing and controlling both the desktop and
infrastructure

Providing transparency to management

 Showing strategic value to C-level management for the IT work
being done
 Adding value to their role
 Improving technician utilization rates to do more with less

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HOW IT DEPARTMENTS
BENEFIT FROM A REMOTE
MONITORING AND
MANAGEMENT PLATFORM
Reduce IT operational costs and
increase IT staff productivity
 Easily automate a host of
manual tasks behind the
scenes, such as:
o Run defrags, send patch
updates, distribute
software, execute scripts
 Desktop policy
management
Remote monitoring to deliver
higher levels of proactive
service
 Become proactive with
access to real-time, 24x7
network information
 Manage a distributed
architecture as if it were
local
 Detect and correct network
and system problems
before they lead to costly
downtime
 Apply monitoring
automatically based on
discovered asset
information
Improve transparency with
tactical and business reporting
 Budgetary and capacity
planning
 Legislative compliance and
warranty management
Drive down operational costs
and increase staff productivity
 Technicians can easily
manage 500+ devices each
 Support and troubleshoot
remotely anywhere,
anytime
 Leverage sophisticated
remote control tools to
improve offsite
maintenance, lower
response times, and
improve off-hours access to
systems
In a 24/7 world, employees and
customers have virtually “zero
tolerance” for device or application
problems, service interruptions, or
system failures. By implementing an
IT strategy that ensures secure,
highly available systems and
support, IT goes a long way to
helping the enterprise attract and
retain customers – and thrive in an
ultra competitive economy.
REMOTE MONITORING
AND MANAGEMENT
This whitepaper has introduced a
number of IT tactics and strategies
for supporting top business priorities
and delivering optimal IT value to
SMB and midsize enterprises.
The total solution for efficiently
delivering this value requires an
integrated platform that gives the IT
manager complete visibility on all
enterprise assets. The solution needs
to give IT the ability to manage;
report on, and control assets in a
cohesive way that brings
transparency to the organization and
superior utilization of all devices
across the infrastructure. All of these
requirements can be directly
supported by a Remote Monitoring
and Management (RMM) platform.
An RMM platform is designed
specifically to automate routine IT
services in midsize businesses while
giving IT Professionals the ability to
monitor and manage devices, and fix
issues on desktops and servers – all
done remotely and easily from a
central location. The specific
functionality provided by an
integrated RMM platform for an
SMB or midsize business is:
 Remote control,
 Remote management,
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 Remote monitoring and
 Reporting performance metrics.

Remote control
Technical issues need to be resolved as quickly and easily as possible to
ensure no downtime and lost services to end customers. With the right
software tool, IT can immediately take control of devices and servers to
troubleshoot and fix issues without disrupting employees. Having the
ability to access and control all devices on a distributed network goes
hand and glove with the ability to fix issues remotely. Remote control is
a key way to increase technician productivity, reduce internal IT service
costs, shorten resolution times, and ultimately, to keep employees
productive – and customers happy.

Remote Monitoring and Management

The ability to remotely monitor is imperative for the proper
management of enterprise network devices. By employing a monitoring
solution that can issue alerts based on thresholds that IT defines,
enterprise decision makers gain impressive insight into potential
problems on the network.

21
 A PROVEN PLATFORM
Moreover, IT can work proactively to
FOR DELIVERING
correct problems before they lead to
SUPERIOR IT VALUE costly downtime for users. The most
effective monitoring and
N-Central from N-able
Technologies provides IT management solutions use a
Departments with a powerful combination of both agents (used
platform that has been purpose primarily on mobile devices such as
built to meet the needs of laptops) and probes to provide a full
resource challenged IT view of the entire business network
Professionals who want to: in the most flexible and efficient
way.
 Remotely monitor and
manage their network and
Reporting
all devices using a single,
easy to use console The ability to access, troubleshoot,
 Reduce costs by driving fix, and manage problems remotely
superior operational is undeniably powerful. The ability to
efficiencies easily report details of IT
 Automate manual tasks to intervention and resolution is the
improve technician final, critical component of an end-
utilization rates – and free to-end RMM platform for IT
up time to proactively focus automation. For example, IT will
on strategic IT initiatives want the ability to report on the
 Auto-discover the
number and duration of downtime
complete network
infrastructure and remotely
incidents, the number of prevented
connect to end user devices incidents, and other key metrics to
instantly regardless of their help quantify the value of the IT
location organization.
 Quickly demonstrate IT
value to enterprise users
In addition, the reporting function of
and C-level executives alike
an integrated RMM platform should
through over 40 pre-built,
enable IT to provide customized
easy-to-read performance
performance reports to senior
reports
managers. For example, can the CEO
log in and immediately see that the
CRM is up and running? What is the
status of email functionality? The
ability to report on these and other
questions through customized CXO level views of the network is critical
to delivering IT value.

Collectively, remote CONTROL, remote MONITORING, remote

MANAGEMENT, and REPORTING define a complete, end-to-end RMM
platform that enables IT to directly support top business priorities,
reduce costs, and create superior IT value.

CONCLUSION
IT departments can directly support all of the top five business priorities
highlighted in this paper through the use of a remote monitoring and
management (RMM) platform. Specifically:

 Priority #1: Business process improvement

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 Priority #2: Reducing enterprise costs
 Priority #3: Increasing the use of information/analytics
 Priority #4: Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness
 Priority #5: Attracting and retaining customers

N-central from N-able Technologies is an award-winning, RMM platform

that delivers the most cost-effective and flexible remote network,
security, desktop, server and environment management solution
available. No other solution combines best-of-class monitoring
capabilities with industry-leading management capabilities.

A comprehensive set of remote management tools is included in N-

central and provides the core functionality that IT professionals require
to manage end-users effectively and deliver more than 90% of services
remotely. These capabilities are critical for complying with internal SLAs
governing IT service delivery.

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Request an
Evaluation Copy
of N-Central 7.0…
The latest release of our
industry leading Remote
Monitoring and Management
platform comes complete
with advanced new features
that make it the easiest, least
complicated and most
flexible platform for
optimizing your entire IT
infrastructure and adding
superior IT value.
Includes Endpoint Security Manager
N-Central has seamlessly integrated
enterprise-class endpoint security
into a leading edge remote control,
remote monitoring, remote
management and reporting
platform. IT can now monitor,
manage and control all devices
through a single management
console. Extending N-Central’s
native multi-tenant capabilities to
endpoint security makes managing
employee devices in distributed
geographic locations dramatically
simpler and more cost effective.
Advanced new features include:

Request your evaluation copy  Flexible, hybrid

and try out the #1 rated (FREEMIUM) licensing model with
Remote Monitoring and Professional and Essential Licenses –
Management platform by for critical and non-critical
visiting www.n-able.com applications that are all managed
from a single centralized console
 Endpoint Security
Manager: delivers integrated Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam, Anti-
Malware, Personal Firewall and Host Intrusion Prevention for
Windows devices
 Self healing: gives you the ability to pre-configure responses to
specific types of failures – saving you more time
 Remote Mediation: the ability to seamlessly fix a problem with
no involvement or disruption to end users
 First to market with Windows 7.0 /R2 support and
compatibility
 And more.

N-Central is available as an on-premise software solution or as a hosted

subscription based service from N-able Certified Resellers.

To learn more about N-able Technologies and N-Central, visit www.N-

able.com

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About N-able Technologies
N-able Technologies is the global leader in remote monitoring and
management software for managed service providers and IT
departments. N-able’s award-winning N-central platform and
complementary toolsets, backed by best-in-class business and technical
services, are proven to reduce IT support costs, improve network
performance and increase productivity through the proactive
monitoring, management and optimization of IP-enabled devices and IT
infrastructure. N-able is 100% channel-friendly and maintains operations
in North America, the U.K., the Netherlands and Australia. Get N-central
with managed endpoint security free for one year.

Copyright
Copyright © 2010 N-able Technologies.
All rights reserved. This document contains information intended for the
exclusive use of N-able Technologies’ personnel, partners and potential
partners. The information herein is restricted in use and is strictly
confidential and subject to change without notice. No part of this document
may be altered, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the express written
permission of N-able Technologies.
Copyright protection includes, but is not limited to, program code, program
documentation, and material generated from the software product
displayed on the screen, such as graphics, icons, screen displays, screen
layouts, and buttons.
N-able Technologies, N-central and Monitor Manage Optimize are
trademarks or registered trademarks of N-able Technologies International
Inc., licensed for use by N-able Technologies, Inc. All other names and
trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

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