ProactiveWatch Offers Centralized Patch Management

ProactiveWatch, a provider of remote monitoring and management software designed for managed service providers (MSPs), value added resellers (VARs) and other IT support companies who manage their customers' systems, announced the availability of centralized patch management to the company's SaaS MSP platform. ProactiveWatch is offering 30-day trial versions of the solution via its Web site.

Designed for service providers that support the small to medium-size business (SMB) market, the company claims setup and configuration takes just seconds, and ProactiveWatch does not require any additional hardware or software or not require Microsoft's WSUS at the Service Provider/VAR or the client site. ProactiveWatch's patching can also be applied to laptops or performed for clients without servers.

Company president Michael Mittel said keeping client systems updated with the latest security patches is a critical, but time consuming task that service providers must perform for their clients. "Using our integrated patch management, Service Providers know exactly what patches are available and for which machines or clients. Patches are approved from the central, ProactiveWatch console rather than having to remote into, or physically visit, each site," he said. "What used to take several hours every week can now be done in less than 10 minutes, and the documentation of the work is built-in. This means our average Service Provider is saving more than 2 days per month that can now be used for higher-revenue generating activities."

ProactiveWatch includes pre-defined templates for Exchange, SQL Server, IIS, Citrix/MSTS, as well as many add-on products and services like Symantec Anti-Virus, Symantec BackupExec, HP Insight Manager, BlackBerry Servers, and others, and every 10 seconds ProactiveWatch checks the resource utilization state of every instance of every process (and user), any changes in installed software, and any changes in the portions of the registry where user installed software or malware can be launched.

Using intuitive filtering, service providers may apply certain patches across all clients and all servers and workstations, or can choose to apply patches only to certain clients, classes of machines (e.g. - Fileservers), or even to individual machines. A monthly Patch Management report is generated automatically for each of the VAR's customers, allowing the VAR to document the patch management work they performed that month.

Earlier this year, the company announced RemoteCommand technology that gives support engineers a tool to respond to IT problems and fix clients' computer systems from their Blackberry, iPhone, or ProactiveWatch console. VARs access the graphical interface from mobile devices like iPhone, or from the ProactiveWatch console, which presents the commands as clickable links. The system contains almost 100 pre-defined actions, as well as the ability to run custom scripts, command files or programs, with built-in support for VMware, SQL and more.