N-Able Adds New Tools To OnDemand

OnDemand is the Ottawa-based vendor&'s hosted, modular, pay-as-you-go MSP offering that solution providers can lease as a way to lower the cost of entry to providing managed services for their customers.

The new module, StoreIT Online, should arrive in about 30 days, said Bill Stewart, vice president of marketing at N-able. When it does, it will join five existing OnDemand MSP modules which provide remote network monitoring, vulnerability assessment, remote access, patch management, and professional services automation. Solution providers can mix and match which modules they lease from N-able. But PatchIT Online is typically the entry point for most VARs, he said, and that may change with the introduction of StoreIT Online.

“Patch management has been the most common entry point, but a lot of our customers are telling us this is what their customers are asking for,” Stewart said. “Storage is a good place to start as an MSP.”

Pricing is not yet available for StoreIT Online, Stewart said. But the new module will be priced in similar fashion to other OnDemand modules, which can cost about $500 for a five-customer license, N-able said.

Scott Garrett, technical services manager at Computer Software Innovations (CSI), Easley, S.C., will add the new module for CSI&'s OnDemand customers who have been getting managed storage services through the use of EVault, an online backup and recovery vendor in Emeryville, Calif.

Out goes EVault because when it comes to managed services, CSI “likes being in bed with one company,” said Garrett.

N-able has crafted a redundant, multilocation storage network to ensure that data backed up from customer locations is protected and can be restored, Stewart said. N-able also will offer an service-level agreement template for solution providers to personalize for their StoreIT Online customers.