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.
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.”