ManageEngine brings a one-stop solution for Unified IT Monitoring

ManageEngine, a division of Zoho Corporation, announced the launch of OpManager Plus, the latest edition of its network management platform. The company offers a variety of products aimed at IT management including hardware, software, and physical as well as virtual infrastructure. But with OpManager Plus, it plans to set a new standard for unified IT monitoring, which it claims is industry’s first EXE-level integration of five network management functions.

One-stop solution

The IT industry has so far dealt with multiple tools for various aspects of network management that do not provide a holistic view testing the patience of admins. But OpManager Plus brings in a single application that integrates five different network management modules and the data those modules generate. The five modules include the following:

• NetFlow monitoring module – provides visibility into network traffic by analyzing NetFlow, sFlow, jFlow, IP FIX and other flows. It identifies top bandwidth consumers by device, application and user.
• Firewall management module – collects, archives and analyzes all firewall logs for auditing and compliance. It tracks user activities and bandwidth consumption and triggers alerts to admins if blocked sites are accessed.
• Configuration management module – backs up, restores, pushes and reverts configurations on network devices, with no device login required. It issues notifications via email and SMS for unauthorized configuration changes.
• IP address management module – manages IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for free space and availability. It tracks the entire history of an IP address, including the devices to which it was allocated.
• End-user-centric bandwidth analysis- The efficiency of OpManager design goes beyond its all-in-one design. The software bears an additional feature that is released as a beta version and help admins keep a track on the personally-owned devices (BYOD) that employees connect to the office network. Additionally, admins can also monitor bandwidth consumed by each app operated on those devices. This provides increased granular visibility into employee bandwidth consumption.

“IT administrators hate using multiple products as they are expensive and difficult to maintain,” said Dev Anand, director of product management at ManageEngine. “The integration provided by OpManager Plus makes network management simpler and smarter and helps IT teams do everything from a single console. Integrated modules with a common database allow further data integration, helping admins find missing data and mitigate network issues in real time. As the new OpManager Plus is just one piece of software, maintenance tasks such as upgrades and backups are easier than ever.”

Simplified upgrades and maintenance

The data integration also extends to dashboards and business views. Along with real-time bandwidth utilization, the dashboard would also show recent completed configuration changes, compliance violations and much more. Business views can add flow-based traffic data combined with the health status of the devices and links. These all-in-one features would make maintenance less cumbersome and overcome other issues like separate backups, service packs and licenses. So a single OpManager Plus console would manage in-depth visibility and control of all aspects of network management for faster troubleshooting. In turn, the router performance snapshot page, for instance, now includes flow-based traffic and configuration management data, which helps admins decide whether the issue is because of the bandwidth or the recent configuration change, without switching tabs. Along the above mentioned features, the new Unified Index further improves usability with common settings, search, inventory, alarms and reports across all OpManager Plus modules. Hence OpManager Plus has introduced the latest generation of the Fluidic user interface in the market.

Pricing and Availability

OpManager Plus is available for immediate download on their official website. The base pack is priced at $995 which includes 25 licenses to monitor devices for performance. This comes along with 25 interfaces for analyzing bandwidth, 25 devices for configuration management, 1 firewall for log analysis and archiving, 250 IPs for IP address management, and 250 switch ports for switch port management.