3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

I grew up working in a family-owned small business and went on to manage a small nonprofit for about a decade. Though I was thankful for the success of the endeavors I worked for, I was also acutely aware of a void that seemed to exist between a successful small business and a successful large business. It was a chasm which sucked time, resources, attention and energy away from things that could have propelled the organization forward, allowing it to leap the gap.

In the past two decades much of that energy has revolved around integrating, then managing, new technology. And once that technology is implemented who do you pay to keep an eye on it? The smaller the business the less money there is to spend on a contracted IT manager, and trying to track down your own system problems to save time is a time-suck few owners can afford.

Network monitoring software has long been a staple for large organizations. A few enterprising companies have realized that providing the same monitoring capabilities to small and medium sized businesses (SMB) can also be lucrative. And while large organizations may want customizable solutions that can be programmed internally, many SMB need turnkey solutions that provide control and information no matter what kind of devices are added to the network.

AdRem Software (News - Alert) is hoping to entice the SMB market with NetCrunch 8, a monitoring system that creates an hourly baseline and alerts system administrators when the real problems arise. Version 8 includes increased monitoring across the network as well as advanced Web and file monitoring, Linux process, open files and connected users monitoring. The software builds a real-time network map and lets administrators set alert rules by device type, rather than individual connection.  Computers, switches, printers, cameras, sensors and mobile devices can be quickly and easily added to the monitoring process via one of more than one hundred predefines monitoring packs, or set up with custom parameters.

NetCruch comes with its own Web server and embedded SQL database. While the company says it can be installed on the Windows Server system and can be configured to monitor Web applications in the cloud, the company also notes that it cannot run in the cloud.