Umit, Backed By Google, Prepares Open Monitor Tool

Joe Panettieri, Former Editorial Director

February 27, 2012

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.

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About the Author

Joe Panettieri

Former Editorial Director, Nine Lives Media, a division of Penton Media

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