Through a partnership between ConnectWise and SonicWall, cost-conscious companies will see tighter integration from the two companies' management applications.
Network security firm SonicWall and ConnectWise, a SAAS/Cloud
provider of professional service automation applications designed for
technology consultants, integrators and developers, announced a partnership
aimed at deeper integration between the SonicWALL Global Management System
(GMS) and ConnectWise Professional Services Automation (PSA) Software.
ConnectWise PSA will leverage the Web Services Application
Programming Interface (API), which is part of the upcoming 6.0 release of
SonicWall GMS. GMS 6.0 is tentatively scheduled for release later in the fourth
quarter of 2009. The required update to the ConnectWise PSA product is
tentatively scheduled to be available sometime in the first half of 2010 at
which time businesses will be able to employ the enhanced integration options.
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The Web Services API is one of many features available in
the upcoming SonicWall GMS 6.0 release. With GMS 6.0, the company is extending
appliance management beyond network security and secure remote access to
encompass email security and continuous data protection. With GMS 6.0, GMS
administrators can define and push policies for continuous data protection
(CDP) and email security appliances at the device, device group, or global
level. The release also gives businesses the ability to run custom reports for
secure remote access devices that allow administrators to use the raw logs
collected from Aventail and SMB SSL VPN devices under management.
Jan Sijp, director of policy and management for SonicWall,
said the company understands that customers do not use the Global Management
System in a vacuum. “In fact, many customers use a wide variety of software
consoles to manage, report on, and monitor their IT infrastructure for either
themselves or, in the case of Managed Service Providers, their customers,” he
said. “Customers also typically use a number of enterprise applications.
Managed service providers and other IT solution providers use Professional
Services Automation tools, such as ConnectWise PSA, to improve efficiencies in
the operations of their business.”
Via the Web Services API, SonicWall GMS will serve up
additional periodically scheduled SonicWall-specific XML reports to ConnectWise
PSA, which will associate the reports to specific customers, bundle SonicWall
reports with reports from other sources. In addition, SonicWall GMS will
provide company and device information to the Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) portion of ConnectWise PSA allowing the IT solution provider customer to tie
SonicWall devices to company accounts. IT administrators will also be able to
automate the retrieval of service contract levels and expiration dates from GMS
for use in the warranty/ service renewal parts of ConnectWise PSA. Thirdly, it
will be possible for SonicWall GMS alerts to trigger the automatic creation of
trouble ticket in the service board part of ConnectWise PSA. For example, the
administrator can create alerts for devices going offline or VPN tunnels going
down.
“It is important that SonicWall GMS interoperates with these
other applications and this is why we developed the new Web Services API,” Sijp
said. “We are confident that the upcoming tighter integration between SonicWall
GMS and ConnectWise PSA will benefit many of our IT solution provider partners
who deploy our equipment and use both SonicWall GMS and ConnectWise PSA."
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