Nimsoft made available this week upgraded software that the service-level management vendor says provides network managers with a "zero administration" tool.

NimBUS 3.3 is designed to automatically discover IT infrastructure components, deploy preconfigured monitoring thresholds, populate dashboards and generate reports. The "no touch" features in this release further simplify the monitoring of network devices, servers and applications, says CEO Gary Read.

Facing competition from management veterans BMC, CA, HP and IBM, Nimsoft needs to differentiate itself with ease of administration and low cost, he says.

"The biggest issues customers have with management software is ease-of-use and total cost of ownership," Read says. "Our vision is to make our software as low maintenance as possible, but still monitoring across the infrastructure to report on service levels."

NimBUS installs on a dedicated server, and depending on the customer environment, can use distributed software agents to monitor response time and other metrics on IT components. The software also can work without distributed agents, using industry-standard APIs to collect performance metrics from servers and network devices.

The automation features in this release allow network managers to get up and running more quickly, Read says. Automated reports and dashboard views can be tailored to IT domains, line of business managers or executives, he adds.

Also new in NimBUS 3.3 is a multitenant capability that would enable management service providers (MSP) to use the software to manage customer nets. This features lets MSPs or large enterprises manage 100 environments with one NimBUS server, the company says.

NimBUS 3.3 starts at $15,000 for small implementations. The software also is available for service providers on a monthly subscription basis.