Remote Computer Monitoring Software

In recent years, more and more of this kind of support has been performed remotely. IT professionals recognize that, with the right tools, they don’t have to walk up to an employees’ cubicle to do their work.

But even with the advent of remote access, users themselves have still faced interruptions. Many remote IT solutions simply haven’t solved the issue with lost productivity. In many cases, IT professionals remotely log into users’ computers, as users sit and watch their cursors move about their screens.

The only real difference from the old days? Employees don’t have to give up their chairs.

The Cost of Lost Employee Productivity

These kinds of interruptions aren’t just frustrating for employees. They’re also a costly time drain.

According to one study, workers often take about 23 minutes to resume a task after they’ve been interrupted. That’s time lost on salaries and operational costs.

Interruptions can exact an emotional toll as well, the researchers found. When workers are interrupted, they test far higher for levels of stress and frustration as they struggle to catch up on lost productivity.

Remote computer monitoring software may allow IT staff to save time on site visits. But if a solution interrupts employee time, it still hasn’t solved the tricky problem of employee productivity.

Too Many Devices — and Applications

There’s another cost to some remote access solutions — complexity.

Not every workstation runs the same operating system. MSPs’ client sites may run Windows, Mac OS X or Linux on their workstations — with varying versions of each OS.

Nor is every workstation configured with the same hardware. And with the explosion of mobility, more and more employees are accessing work through smartphones, tablets and laptops.

All of which has made life difficult for IT professionals. To support so many operating systems and devices, MSPs have grown to rely on a panoply of third-party solutions. Each of these solutions varies in performance. And each comes with potential security concerns.

It’s no surprise that IT professionals are venting about the issue. In a global survey of nearly 2,500 IT professionals, the Ponemon Institute found that complexity is one of the greatest concerns among IT professionals.

IT professionals know that they must reduce the complexity of their operations. Among survey respondents, about 40 percent reported that they used up to 10 vendor solutions to accommodate their users.

Much of the available remote computer monitoring software offers a tantalizing promise: MSPs and other IT professionals can manage users’ workstations without ever sitting in those users’ task chairs. For many of the available solutions, the promise of remote access comes with a litany of costs — to workers, organizations and IT providers themselves.

A Better Option

There’s a reason more than 15,000 customers worldwide have flocked to SolarWinds MSP (formerly LOGICnow). MSP RMM is efficient. It’s elegant. And with features designed for MSPs, it fulfills the largest promises of remote IT administration without the costly drawbacks.

How do we boost productivity?

Read on.

The End of Interruptions

With MSP RMM from SolarWinds MSP, you can say goodbye to user interruptions. That’s the benefit of Remote Background Management and Take Control.

With these solutions, you can offer your clients seamless IT support, without interrupting the end user’s desktop experience. The benefits include:

• Remote command line. Your remote command line is always on and is easily accessible from within a single, centralized dashboard.
• System file configurations. Working entirely in the background, you can easily manipulate system files.
• Performance maintenance. You can view the resource usage from ongoing processes, kill unresponsive programs and create a check that monitors problem issues.
• Service management. Execute, terminate and restart system services.
• Service dependencies. View dependencies and monitor services that have grown problematic using a Windows service check.

Take Full Control

Sometimes, MSPs will still need to take complete control of a workstation. We built MSP RMM with MSPs’ challenges in mind and included key functionalities that keep your networks efficient, your users happy and your client organizations productive.

With Take Control, you can:

• Offer quicker support. Connecting through a firewall? Not a problem. With MSP RMM, you can connect immediately and quickly fix a user’s issue.
• Reduce bandwidth usage. Our remote computer monitoring software has a light bandwidth footprint that keeps your operations running smoothly and efficiently.
• Take comfort in security. Remote sessions take place over a secure connection.
• Run thorough reports. Generate reports on remote access sessions so you can better track your work.
• Access workstations at any time. Even if you’re outside working hours, you can remotely access your clients’ workstations and solve pressing issues.
• Keep track of important users. You can save your top-priority users in a contact list so you can connect to them and quickly solve their tickets.

Monitor Everything on Your Network

IT environments can be chaotic, as multiple devices enter and exit networks. MSPs know that to manage large and complex networks, total visibility of their resources is key.

With MSP RMM, you benefit from continuous, real-time remote monitoring, covering all the devices across your network. We help you maintain your IT environments with:

• Cross-platform support. MSP RMM offers support for multiple operating systems and platforms. You can monitor workstations and servers running Windows, Mac OS X and multiple version of Linux.
• Network-performance tracking. With SNMP functionality, monitor your servers, printers, switches and routers, among other network devices.
• Mobile visibility. Our remote computer monitoring software also gives you visibility over mobile devices. With mobile device checks and monitoring, you can keep track of smartphones and tablets.
• Virtual machine tracking. You can run checks on all of your virtual machines and virtual sessions.

Automation to the Rescue

One challenge for MSPs is to keep track of all their network resources. Working with multiple client sites and networks, MSPs have a lot on their plates.

MSP RMM helps ease your workload with:

• Automatic alerts. Get alerts about the availability of devices, the performance of your network, emerging security issues and the status of data backups.
• Rapid hardware checks. Check the performance of hardware and software across multiple client sites, and across workstations and servers.
• Security tracking. Easily monitor results from antivirus scans and event log errors.
• Automated emails. You can set emails to automatically arrive in your inbox should an issue arise with failed checks or overdue servers.

Keep Your Networks Safe

Our remote computer monitoring software is only one part of our larger solution. With MSP RMM, you can discover and manage devices as they enter your network, an important step to keeping your networks safe. If you’re an MSP, device discovery also helps with billing as you work to ensure you’ve accounted for all of your clients’ devices.

Active discovery gives you the power to:

• Track the details. Easily search for devices on your network and keep them categorized using detailed information such as MAC addresses, IPs and hostnames.
• Handle issues in Windows networks. Benefit from active directory monitoring tools and handle any Windows network issues before they grow larger.
• Monitor connection logs. Track devices as they enter and exit your network and keep a detailed log of the activity.
• Manage BYOD policies. Enforce your clients’ bring-your-own-device policies by preventing exposure to personal devices that can compromise your networks.

Blunt Malware

With 1.5 million cyber attacks per year, users are now exposed to more dangers than ever. The web presents a host of security challenges, from malvertisements to drive-by-downloads.

MSP RMM keeps your users safe with built-in web protection. And with functionalities that go beyond enterprise standards, you can get a good night’s sleep knowing that your workforce is going to remain secure and productive.

Web protection includes:

• Wide safeguards. Prevent users against a wide variety of web attacks, including malware, phishing and botnets.
• Customizable blacklists. Set custom browsing policies that keep users off dangerous — and time-wasting — websites and update the policies with new URLs whenever you need to.
• Time-based browsing policies. An employer may want to grant Facebook access at lunchtime or the end of the workday. With custom, time-dependent rules, you can set specific time windows for more relaxed blacklists.
• Simple administration. Our web-based console makes administration a breeze. Gain control over users’ web browsing with no dedicated servers or proxies to configure.
• Monitor bandwidth. Keep businesses safe by closely monitoring any unusual patterns in bandwidth.

Virus-Free Networks

Like remote computer monitoring software, remote virus scans can be a drag on employee productivity. Other vendors sell lagging, resource-intensive antivirus solutions — the kinds that users may try their best to thwart.

MSP RMM takes care of the issue. Our managed antivirus is:

• Light on resources. We offer exceptional performance, keeping virus scans lightweight on network resources.
• Easy to schedule. You can schedule deeper scans for off-hours when employee productivity won’t be disrupted.
• Advance scanning. Our managed antivirus uses traditional, signature-based scans to root out all known threats. But it also uses heuristic checks that protect against previously unknown threats, as well as behavioral scanning to detect programs that behave like malware.

Saving Time for MSPs 

Competitors’ remote solutions aren’t only a drag for employees and organizations; they can be a time drain for MSPs, too.

That’s why MSPs choose intelligence with SolarWinds MSP. MSP RMM gives you a suite of automation and scripting tools so you can save yourself precious time — and continue building up your client base.

You can save time with:

• 100+ pre-defined automation scripts for mundane tasks.
• Bulk actions across many machines at once.
• Tasks that are triggered when a monitoring check raises an issue.
• Your own custom scripts using any of the main scripting languages.
• Scheduled script deployment.

Check out this risk-free 30-day trial of MSP RMM today. You won’t regret the 10 minutes it takes to get up and running.

About SolarWinds MSP

SolarWinds MSP delivers the only 100% SaaS, fully cloud-based IT service management (ITSM) platform, backed by collective intelligence and the highest levels of layered security. SolarWinds MSP products including Risk Intelligence, Remote Management, Backup & Disaster Recovery, Mail and Service Desk – comprise the market’s most widely trusted integrated solution.

Deployed on millions of endpoints across hundreds of thousands of networks, the platform has the industry vision to define and deliver the future of the market. SolarWinds MSP provides the most comprehensive IT security available as well as LOGICcards, the first ever IT notification feature powered by prescriptive analytics and machine learning.

Our passion is helping IT professionals secure and manage their systems and data through actionable insights, rewriting the rules of IT.

For more information, contact us today.

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Sources:

Fast Company: https://www.fastcompany.com/944128/worker-interrupted-cost-task-switching
Ponemon Institute: http://www.ponemon.org/local/upload/file/Check_Point_White_Paper_FINAL_6 copy.pdf
CBS: http://www.cbs.com/shows/csi-cyber/news/1003888/these-cybercrime-statistics-will-make-you-think-twice-about-your-password-where-s-the-csi-cyber-team-when-you-need-them-/