Ironic as it may seem, when it comes to providing system monitoring capabilites to their customers, management service providers (MSPs) and ASPs would rather keep the software of their own servers, according to infrastructure service provider BMC Software Inc. . To address that need, the Houston-based company will announce on Monday Patrol Express, an agentless monitoring product.
But it’s not the monitoring application itself that’s new. What’s new is the name and where the software is deployed. According to Jason Andrew, director of subscription services at BMC, Patrol Express is a “productized version” of its Web-based GuardianAngel. Service providers can install Patrol Express — which carries a fixed, perpetual-license fee — at their site versus use it as a hosted product.
Announced last November, GuardianAngel is a subscription-based application designed to provide entry-level service level performance and availability monitoring for servers, applications and network devices (see BMC Sends Service Providers GuardianAngel).
Patrol Express (and GuardianAngel) consists of two parts: an XML-based service integration portal (SIP) and remote service monitor (RSM), which tunnels inside a firewall to provide the performance monitoring capabilities without requiring downloadable client software.
Andrews told ASPnews that Patrol Express addresses MSPs and ASPs demand for greater control over monitoring systems in three areas: administering the portal, integrating data, and customizing the monitoring and reporting features.
BMC describes Patrol Express as a “lightweight and lower-cost version” of Patrol, its enterprise management service. While Patrol Express is built for monitoring less-critical systems, Patrol is designed to handle mission-critical applications, servers and devices. Patrol is built to not only identify less than optimal application and service performance, but to automatically take corrective action before the problem impacts completion of critical business processes. BMC says Patrol Express customers can easily scale up to the distributed configuration of Patrol.
Pricing for Patrol Express is based on a flat-fee for each device being monitored, according to Andrews. BMC charges $100 for each hub, router and switch monitored; $400 for each server monitored; and $800 for each application monitored.
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