Dan's Take
Ipswitch: Simple Pricing for Mid-Market Monitoring
Rejecting the piecemeal pricing strategy is good for customers.
- By Dan Kusnetzky
- 09/16/2016
Ipswitch is trying to offer high-end capabilities packaged in a set of tools designed for the mid-market; that is, the rest of us. It's offering a comprehensive set of tools under the name "WhatsUp Gold" that span an impressive list of capabilities, including:
- Network and server monitoring
- Application monitoring
- Web performance monitoring
- Network bandwidth optimization
- Configuration management
- Log and event management
Dan's Take: Throwback, Simplified Pricing Is Good
I like Ipswitch's approach to providing enterprise IT administration with comprehensive, yet easy-to-use tools that can address the needs for monitoring of systems, virtual systems, application performance, network management, workflow and even detailed WiFi monitoring. I'm hoping to see a full demo in the near future.
What I found most interesting was Ipswitch's licensing and packaging model, because it's a throwback to an earlier time: monitor everything under one license. The company believes that today's "a la carte" approach is too confusing and doesn't address the real-world needs most enterprises have.
IT administration too often finds itself dealing with a changing landscape of new applications, new platforms, new networking tools and a herd of endpoint devices that are constantly changing.
Ipswitch, instead, offers a simpler approach. Their tools are licensed under a single license, based on the type of monitoring needed:
- ProView. Network and server monitoring
- TotalView. End to end visibility
- TotalView Plus. End to end visibility plus administration
The other pricing factor is the number of items being monitored.
The company also offers tools for advanced file synchronization and management that I'll hear more about soon. If you aren't familiar with Ipswitch, it would be worth your time to learn more.
About the Author
Daniel Kusnetzky, a reformed software engineer and product manager, founded Kusnetzky Group LLC in 2006. He's literally written the book on virtualization and often comments on cloud computing, mobility and systems software. He has been a business unit manager at a hardware company and head of corporate marketing and strategy at a software company.