SilverBack adapts to meet SMB needs

Most major enterprise management vendors still don’t address the needs of small businesses. In some respects, the challenges for “enterprise” management in this market are even greater than those in larger businesses with greater resources.

If you’re responsible for managing the IT infrastructure in a small business, I trust you’ll agree. Depending on your industry, and the level of IT awareness and dependency in your business, you may be expected to provide the same standards for availability, performance, security, compliance, change and configuration, service management and so forth that you’d face with a budget several decimal points larger.

Plus, adaptability from a business perspective is, I would argue, probably more important for small and midsize businesses (SMB) – where the dynamics of competitive advantage and disadvantage are experienced with fewer buffers, resulting in choices often made in less time with fewer options.

It’s sort of the difference between piloting a riverboat up a canal in a war zone and sitting on a destroyer more comfortably out to sea.

From a management perspective, the demands of the SMB market add cost sensitivities, ease of deployment and administration, and ease of integration to the already generally tortured list of management requirements most vendors face.

SilverBack Technologies, a Massachusetts company, addressed many of these requirements in what it originally called InfoCare, but what is now packaged variously as “Datacenter,” “Professional” and “Portable.” SilverBack’s products have evolved to support not only fault and performance management, but also inventory, asset, security and compliance management. I should add that this list is still not complete – there is now software distribution or change management, for instance.

SilverBack’s offerings, while very well integrated, approach management in terms of events, log files, and thresholds on a primarily element basis. There is event filtering, for instance, but no advanced analytics – at least not yet.

For most smaller businesses, SilverBack has provided a strong and pragmatic answer to most core management requirements without the hassle of integration. And SilverBack has designed its offerings for remote support – managed management, in the manner that originally made sense for management service providers (MSP), through VPN and now HTTPS links.

SilverBack’s business model has also evolved, so that its current management capabilities are available through service providers. SilverBack Technologies learned to recognize that its largest market includes MSPs, VARs and consultants. Moreover, SilverBack captured its marketing expertise in reaching SMBs in a program that it uses to support its broader service provider clientele. So the best way now to get at SilverBack’s generally well-tailored offerings is through its channel partners.

SilverBack’s technology can be purchased through a network or channel partners either as a product (i.e., SilverBack Professional) or as a service. Professional pricing starts at approximately $17,000, while the service ranges from $60 to several hundred dollars per device, depending upon the partner and type of devices being monitored. SilverBack and its channel partners are definitely worth checking out if you’re a mid-tier or small business with a need for comparatively cost-effective managed services that include security with broad-based infrastructure management.