CRN Exclusive: LogicMonitor Rolls Out New Performance Monitoring Tool Customized For The Channel
LogicMonitor has introduced a performance monitoring platform for service providers that improves configuration management and co-management capabilities for channel partners and their customers.
The Santa Barbara, Calif.-based vendor said it will carve out and elevate pieces from its core platform that are particularly relevant to the service provider community, according to David Powell, general manager of LogicMonitor's service provider business. The platform will provide service providers will faster client onboarding, improved issue resolution times and more transparency, the company said.
Service providers typically manage more heterogeneous environments than LogicMonitor's direct customers, Powell told CRN. Both the channel partner and end user often team up to handle IT management responsibilities in those situations, Powell said.
To better address co-management scenarios, Powell said LogicMonitor's service provider platform has role-based access control features that enable partners to provide individual customers with different levels of access without exposing the entire environment.
In addition, service providers typically have a far greater number of people touching a customer's environment that an enterprise customer directly managing its own IT ecosystem, Powell said.
LogicMonitor has therefore enhanced its configuration management capabilities to make it easier for service providers to track the performance of a client's ecosystem before and after making configuration changes, Powell said.
The service provider platform will extend beyond product development to include dedicated LogicMonitor resources around product marketing, training and professional services, according to Megan Popma, LogicMonitor's product marketing manager.
LogicMonitor also plans to support service providers in their evolution from using the performance monitoring tool to watch over their own services to putting it on their line card for customers as a standalone offering, Powell said.
The embrace of consumption and public cloud model has resulted in end user environments being more distributed and complex, Powell said, meaning that clients are longing for tools that provide greater visibility into both traditional and cutting-edge ecosystems.
"End users are experiencing the same dynamics as service providers," Powell said.
LogicMonitor therefore decided to codify its best "Monitoring-as-a-Service" practices into a white paper to assist clients looking to extend performance monitoring capabilities to the end user level with their go-to-market strategy, Powell said.
Service providers currently account of 40 percent of LogicMonitor's overall business, CEO Kevin McGibben told CRN in August. The company has seen year-over-year growth in its service provider business increase by 83 percent, according to a 2017 CRN Channel Chiefs profile of Powell.
As part of that effort, LogicMonitor hired Powell in September to lead its newly-formed service provider business unit.
LogicMonitor expects the new service provider platform to fuel growth in Asia-Pacific as well as Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Powell said LogicMonitor has refrained from building out its own sales force in Europe, opting instead to embrace a partner-only model for the region.
Roughly 10 percent of LogicMonitor's business today is in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to the company.
LogicMonitor has engaged deeply with its service provider community through advisory councils and power-user groups, according to Brandon Myers, director of managed services at Birmingham, Ala.-based TekLinks, No. 174 on the CRN Solution Provider 500. This has enabled the company to position itself as the strategic vendor partner of choice, Myers said.
"LogicMonitor has always adopted a partner-first strategy when it comes to service providers," Myers said in a statement. "It's very important to us that we pick vendors that prioritize the channel, and the debut of LogicMonitor's service provider platform is a perfect example of that type of partner-first approach."