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Don't you just love when somebody asks you to name the best of something? It has a way of making me shiver for I know, inevitably, my answer will provoke the rebuttal "but what about...?" But sometimes selecting a breakthrough product or service is so easy, and the rightness of that choice so obvious, that no one can argue with it. Such is the case for my nominee this year - the InfoCare service from SilverBack Technologies (coincidentally, one of Network World's 10 start-ups to watch in 2000).
What do I like about InfoCare? Well, what's not to like? SilverBack has combined management tools, outsourcing concepts and Web bundling in an offering that impacts the user and managed services provider markets.
Let's face it, trying to keep pace with the growth in demand (new users, technologies and services) has stressed many IT departments to the breaking point. IT managers have used outsourcing, but they've always run into the trust factor - "How much do I trust the outsourcing provider?" - just like we question today's service-level management providers. Going even deeper, there is the increasing problem of being able to assess the health of your network infrastructure at any time.
The InfoCare service consists of a few powerful monitoring and reporting tools installed within a user's site. These tools, sold on a yearly subscription basis, can track and easily display network and server performance status, network or IT failures or hot spots, security threats or the condition of any IP device on the network.
Here's where InfoCare really gets interesting. Besides providing tools, SilverBack runs a tech-support center to which a customer site is linked via a secure connection. From this support center, SilverBack can perform outsourced management functions, such as service-level agreement (SLA) monitoring, internal IT trouble-ticket response (such as first-level tech support), software monitoring and upgrades, and data backup. In short, anything that you would normally do internally, SilverBack can arrange for through InfoCare.
To accomplish this, SilverBack will work with other vendors on development of appropriate management tools. It doesn't need to make all the management tools, just help you use them better.
You can monitor the process through a series of Web-based monitoring tools. These are significantly different from the bulky, overbuilt, Sovietesque management tools favored for onsite deployment by outsourcing firms only a few years ago.
Have the components of SilverBack's strategy been around individually? Sure they have. But in this market, timing is everything and SilverBack has put the right pieces together, in the right package at the right time.
McClimans is chairman and former CEO of Current Analysis, a competitive intelligence and analysis firm in Sterling, Va.
Related links
SilverBack's Web site
10 Companies to Watch: SilverBack
Network World, 04/00.
Staying in control with SilverBack's InfoCare
Network World Network Systems Management Newsletter, 03/20/00.
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