By Dan Berthiaume

managed security services

Retina CS integrates security risk discovery, prioritization, remediation, and reporting across a company’s infrastructure from a single Web-based console. Multi-tenant support allows MSPs to operate a single version of Retina CS 3.5 with a customized virtual application instance for each client. To further support MSP hosting of Retina CS 3.5 in a virtualized environment. BeyondTrust is also extending its support for cloud connectors with support for IBM SmartCloud. The company already supports cloud connectors including VMware vCenter, Amazon EC, RackSpace and GoGrid.

The Advantages of Multi-tenancy

Delivering Retina CS 3.5 as multi-tenant offers several significant benefits for MSPs. Of course, it is a far more cost-effective way for MSPs to serve multiple clients, as they avoid having to set up physical infrastructure or purchase and deploy individual versions of the application for each client.

In addition, multi-tenancy allows MSPs to collect and aggregate data from all Retina users into a single database schema. This allows them to more easily perform data mining and run queries across the data of all users, enabling MSPs to more quickly detect large-scale problems (such as a malware attack or organized hacking effort) than they would be able by analyzing the data from each individual customer and then combining the results for further meta-analysis.

As “Big Data” becomes more of a mainstream business issue and customers have higher expectations of MSP “Big Data” capabilities, this type of smooth data aggregation will become increasingly important. Other benefits include easier distribution of upgrades, patches and repairs and less complex maintenance and operation of individual client solutions.

Multi-tenancy offers MSPs crucial advantages in effectively providing managed services to a large number of clients, and helps level the playing field between MSPs and larger vendors or IT service providers. MSPs should look for vendors such as BeyondTrust who make their applications available with multi-tenant support, and any vendor that wants to have a strong presence in the MSP marketplace should strongly consider offering it. The benefits to MSPs, end users and the vendors themselves are surely worth at least an investigation.