New ASP twist: Mgmt. service providers
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You've heard of application service providers (ASP). Now get ready for a wave of management service providers.
Strategies vary, but mostly these companies monitor and manage their customers' networks and systems, looking for problems. Like ASPs taking on application headaches, these companies take on IT management headaches.
At a time when qualified IT personnel are difficult to find and management software is often difficult to use, the idea of making it all someone else's problem is becoming more attractive. Gartner Group analyst Stephen Elliot says the market for these services should reach $2 billion by 2003. The size of the opportunity has resulted in a recent explosion of management service providers, including @Manage, InteQ, NetSolve, ProactiveNet, SilverBack, SiteRock, StrataSource and TriActive.
Part of the draw for enterprises is that management service providers can have IT personnel monitoring customers' networks round the clock, says Paul Holden, director of technology infrastructure and support at Sedgwick Claims Management Services. His company's WAN is monitored by NetSolve.
"NetSolve knows about network problems before our clients or our internal colleagues even notice," Holden says, adding that NetSolve typically notifies Sedgwick within a minute of any network service degradation. "That responsiveness is very important to us."
Gartner Group's Elliot points out that subscribers to management services no longer have to worry about building, training and retaining an IT staff. The services probably will appeal most to small and midsize companies that don't have the resources to maintain their own IT staffs.
Starting small
As with ASPs, however, many management service providers are still just trying to earn their first customers. InteQ, for example, claims three early adopters for its service, and SilverBack says it will announce some customers when the company officially debuts at the end of the month.
Enterprises may be reluctant to give up control of their networks, especially since networks are becoming critical to their success. But in many cases, the management service providers simply gather information and point to potential problems.
"We do not take ownership of the problem itself," says Santhana Krishnan, CEO of InteQ. "We'll just keep an eye on it for customers."
One management service provider, @Manage, offers a Web-based tool it developed. Clients provide access to their networks via a virtual private network and give @Manage device information and IP addresses, says Paras Gupta, the company's president and CEO. Remotely, @Manage's software collects data from customers' network devices, using Simple Network Management Protocol. Clients then can view their network performance data and alarms over a secure connection.
SilverBack also developed its own Web interface, but it works in conjunction with management software that resides at the customer site. That way, if the link between SilverBack and the site fails, the client can still use the management software on- site, says Skip MacAskill, vice president of marketing at SilverBack.
The company's Web interface can receive information from disparate management applications and present it all together, MacAskill says. This insulates customers from the complexity of having multiple management applications, he says.
Some of the management service providers use a particular management platform. InteQ, for instance, primarily uses Hewlett-Packard's OpenView and IT/Operations, in conjunction with some systems management components from BMC Software.
At this point, much of the outsourced network management services center around a company's WAN connections, or its Web site. Sedgwick Claims' Holden says his company still retains control of the LAN portion of its 64 locations throughout the country. In the future, however, he says he might be willing to hand over control of some of his larger sites to a management service provider.
Holden says that not having to deal with his frame relay carrier is liberating. "Having NetSolve manage the carrier gives us the freedom to do our own core business," he says.
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