Comments on: Managed Services APIs: Six Questions You Need to Ask

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:01:38 +0000

Hi Brittny: Thanks for the note. Feel free to send me an email (joe [at] NineLivesMediaInc.com) and we can dig up the art source for you.

By: Brittny

Brittny — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:57:40 +0000

Hi, my name is Brittny, and I am a student at El Camino College. I was wondering where you got the picture of the man standing on the puzzle pieces. The picture that is on the article titled-Managed Services APIs: Six Questions You Need to Ask, Posted June 18th, 2009 by Joe Panettieri. I am doing a school assignment, and I could really use that picture in one of my assignments, but I wanted to make sure I get legal rights first. My assignment is Due November 2, 2009, so if you could get back to me before then, that would be great.

Thanks!

By: Peter Sandiford

Peter Sandiford — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:23:18 +0000

Level Platforms goal is to “See all, Manage all” implying a central management dashboard for all technologies. We have built integration points with over 350 products and recently announced support for SaaS and Cloud Services reflecting the fact that managing PCs and Servers now represents a declining part of the MSP opportunity. Our goal in all cases is to leverage standards and the rapidly growing built-in manageability features offered from vendors rather than compete with them using proprietary management agents.

On the related point of RMM and PSA products, we have opted for as deep and seamless integration as possible on the theory that nobody really cares who does what as long as it works. With this in mind, Level Platforms has established deep two-way integration with Autotask, ConnectWise, Microsoft CRM, Solutions 360, TigerPaw, and others including many NOC help desk tools (alphabetically listed to confirm our 100% commitment to providing choice). In addition, our APIs support full multiple synchronization among all of these so that MSPs can collaborate with each other and other service providers including their NOC of choice without concern for the PSA tools they happen to use. And while our dashboard is comprehensive, many MSPs work with their PSA as their main application, a practice we fully support and encourage.

Peter Sandiford
http://www.levelplatforms.com

By: Jim Lancaster

Jim Lancaster — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:26:19 +0000

No worries, Joe. You didn’t lose MY comment.

I think there is a unique opportunity for a startup–but the dashboard is only a part of it. What about alert aggregation? Every tool or service an MSP uses throws off alerts. Each has its own notification lists, notification windows, etc, etc. Managing this is a royal pain. It would be natural fit for the dashboard provider to centrally manage alerts as well.

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:51:01 +0000

Jim, Readers: An apology… I accidentally deleted some comments on this items plus other site comments on Saturday morning. Manual error on my part. We’re trying to recover the comments and re-post them. We’ll keep you updated on our progress.

Jim: Which “third party” would you like to see in the market offering a dashboard? Is there an opportunity here for a start-up to provide that universal dashboard?

By: Jim Lancaster

Jim Lancaster — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:05:08 +0000

With regards to question #4 and integrating RMM and PSA data. The responsibility for integrating them lies with whichever vendor is trying to aggregate the data. The one providing the data to be aggregated should only be responsible for making the data readily available. Ultimately, I would prefer to see a third party provide a universal dashboard, rather than rely on one of the existing MSP software vendors do it.