Quest Software Continues PacketTrap MSP Investments
First, a little background: Big software companies have spent recent months buying up remote monitoring and management platforms for MSPs. Examples include:
As you may recall, Quest Software in December 2009 purchased PacketTrap — a remote management and monitoring platform. Fast forward to the present, and Quest seems to be making significant, continued investments in PacketTrap. Here’s the update.
First, a little background: Big software companies have spent recent months buying up remote monitoring and management platforms for MSPs. Examples include:
- Quest acquiring PacketTrap
- Citrix Online buying Paglo (now rebranded as GoToManage)
- CA Inc. buying Nimsoft
We’re watching those deals (and others) for signs of progress.
Quest’s Latest Moves
Long term, it sounds like Quest plans to focus PacketTrap more and more on network centric monitoring, because PC monitoring is an extremely crowded market where it’s difficult to differentiate. Take a look at the PacketTrap network, and you’ll notice key partnerships with networking-centric companies like Cisco Systems and Juniper. Watch for that network-centric strategy to accelerate in the months ahead.
Still, Quest wants to make sure PacketTrap covers all the basics in the PC monitoring and management space. A prime example: The new PacketTrap MSP 5.2 release now has over 40 desktop management functions that “will dramatically improve MSP’s ability to provide quality desktop support service and lower their cost of delivery,” asserts Mike Byrne, director of product management for Quest Software’s Network Management Division.
On the networking front, PacketTrap MSP 5.2 has a an SNMP Trap Manager, which is a complete receiver and analysis utility that that captures SNMP traps sent from various devices on a network, Byrne says. There’s also a network mapping tool built into 5.2.
Your Mileage May Vary
As you know, I only blog about this stuff — I don’t sit down behind the dashboard and actually use the software. So I can never guarantee that software will work as advertised.
Still, it’s clear to me that Quest is investing in PacketTrap, which now has about 80,000 users. During recent conferences across the U.S., I’ve noticed Quest-PacketTrap marketing materials and booths. To the outsider looking in for the first time, it seems as if PacketTrap is a natural part of Quest’s product portfolio. I wonder if customers agree with me.
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There has always been a close alignment between the technologies used for understanding how applications are performing across the network and those used for network-facing security monitoring.
Nowhere is that more true than with application flow-based analysis. Direct monitoring of packet streams offers a deep and rich viewpoint and reveals valuable operational intelligence about the health and activity of business-critical applications and services as they cross the network while also affording an excellent vantage point for recognizing threats. This parallel capability represents a unique opportunity for Managed Service Providers, where a single instrumentation point can serve as the basis for two complementary services. Congruity has introduced Inspector, a packet-based network performance and security management offering, to capitalize on this convergence.
Kind regards,
Scott W Smith
http://www.congruitytech.com
Quest will funnel the PT product through it’s ScriptLogic subsidiary as I see many synergies and very well established sale infrastructure.
….And considering that Packettrap, as a stand-alone company before being absorbed, had secured a modest $5 million dollars in venture capital in 07, further investment by Quest isn’t too unexpected. There are complementary feature with the existing Quest lines to be sure, but, I suppose, it still remains to be seen how well it flies against the incumbent purveyors of SNMP management systems.