ManageEngine is shipping out the latest version of its network monitoring platform. OpManager 9.2 follows last year’s product release, and the company is touting cost as one of the key benefits of the latest version of the product.

With the enterprise network monitoring solution (NMS) market becoming increasingly busy and crowded, ManageEngine is trying to entice customers based on not only lower costs but also an easy-to-use interface. Naturally, the company also has added enhanced and new features and functionality to its solution, including accelerated discovery of more than 5,000 interfaces per minute, support for Active Directory, Microsoft SQL and other apps for log file monitoring, and the ability to forward events to HP OpenView and IBM Netcool.

“They can download, install and configure it within 30 minutes. With version 9.2, we have made it attractive for even the large enterprise networks,” said Dev Anand, director of product management for ManageEngine’s NPM division, in a statement. “With a faster discovery option and the rule engine module, it’s now possible to discover and configure thousands of devices in less than an hour.”

ManageEngine is hammering home the advantage of OpManager as a low-cost alternative to other network monitoring solutions — hardly surprising considering the vendor’s parent company is Zoho, which has been positioning itself as a low-cost cloud collaboration and document management alternative to Google Docs. ManageEngine claims OpManager offers “90 percent of the functionality at 10 percent of the cost.”

As with other monitoring solutions on the market, OpManager can track the performance of various elements of the network, including virtual servers. ManageEngine’s go-to-market strategy supports both reseller and system integrator channels, and it claims 55,000 customers around the world and three of every five Fortune 500 companies.

OpManager Enterprise Edition is available now at a list price of $16,495 for support of 500 devices.