Umit, Backed By Google, Prepares Open Monitor Tool
Umit, an open source organization that’s loosely affiliated with Google, is preparing Open Monitor, a free and open source tool that will allow customers and service providers to monitor Internet connectivity conditions from any part of the world. If Open Minitor works as advertised, I wonder if there are potential integration opportunities with traditional RMM (remote monitoring and management) software that many MSPs already leverage.
Open Monitor is part of the Umit Project Open Source Organization. So far Umit has four main projects:
- Open Monitor
- Network Scanner
- Network Administrator/Inventory
- PacketManipulator/UMPA
An Open Monitor alpha test for selected trusted testers is expected to surface in the next few weeks, according to Google’s Open Source blog.
Andriano Marques, the Umit project leader, offered background on the Open Monitor strategy in this November 2011 presentation:
Side note: Sometimes my enthusiasm for open source gets the best of me. When we first launched MSPmentor in 2008, I blogged frequently about the potential of open source software in the managed services market.
More recently I’ve tried to offer a more balanced approach to our coverage — pointing out potential upsides of open source while also conceding that many commercial open source projects never really gain big backing.
So what does that all mean for Open Monitor?
- I’m curious to see if Open Monitor will simply track internet censoring by certain governments and political parties.
- Or if Open Monitor will emerge as a broader set of tools and services that really track connectivity issues and bandwidth problems in a detailed manner, potentially giving MSPs deeper insights into customers’ cloud issues.
The alpha sounds like it’s really close to launch. We’ll be watching.
Thanks for posting about Open Monitor! We are also thrilled with this idea, and putting a lot of effort to get it done ASAP.
Answering to your questions, Open Monitor isn’t focused on censorship, but on monitoring Internet Connectivity from wherever Internet is available. With that, censorship is only one of the several possible reasons for a connectivity disruption.
We are not affiliated to any government or parties, and we don’t defend any political view.
Open Monitor is available for any person anywhere in the world for free, and in order to check availability you won’t even need to subscribe to the site once we first get our first stable version released.
If you want to stay in the loop and get news about releases and participate in our trusted testers program, subscribe in our website. We’ve got some cool stuffs coming out real soon!
Adriano,
Thanks for those deeper details on Open Minitor. I realize you’re not affiliated with any government or parties. Good to hear Open Monitor will focus on far more than monitoring censorship-related Internet connection issues.
-jp