The addition of Monitis strongly positions GFI Software to solve the unprecedented
IT management challenges arising from the rapid adoption of cloud computing

Clearwater, Fla. – Oct. 25, 2011 – GFI Software today announced that it has acquired Monitis, the pioneer of cloud-based network and systems monitoring solutions. This acquisition further strengthens GFI’s ability to provide affordable end-to-end systems monitoring for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and to be a one-stop shop for managing heterogeneous IT infrastructures, be they on-premise, hosted or in the cloud.

“Today’s acquisition shows our commitment to expanding our solutions, helping our customers succeed in the rapid uptake of cloud-based services,” said Walter Scott, CEO of GFI Software. “As more and more SMBs adopt cloud computing, GFI is diversifying its own product portfolio to ensure we continue delivering the technology that ensures our customers remain leaders in their fields. While cloud computing enables companies to cut costs and streamline operations, it adds an unprecedented layer of management challenges for which Monitis offers a great fit.”

Monitis specializes in cloud-based software and infrastructure monitoring. Its solutions provide time-pressed IT administrators and IT support companies with a complete infrastructure view. With Monitis, users can monitor, test and manage the performance of on-premise and off-premise infrastructure and applications.

More than 80,000 users worldwide rely on Monitis. More than 200,000 websites and cloud-based applications are monitored and maintained by Monitis services, with more than 40 million checks and records created each day.

“Joining GFI Software gives us the capital, expertise and business resources that will enable us to make our products stronger and invest in features and functions that will help our customers’ businesses grow,” said Hovhannes Avoyan, CEO of Monitis. “GFI is a leader in the network monitoring and management market in the SMB space, and our solutions strongly complement one another now and will be increasingly interconnected as cloud computing continues to grow.”

Following the acquisition, the business will continue operations under the Monitis brand and the solutions will continue to be available as free and paid services to customers worldwide. The senior leadership and management team that built Monitis will remain in place to continue driving new innovations in the company’s services.

The Monitis technology also will be integrated into the GFI MAX RemoteManagement™ platform for managed services providers (MSPs). This will enable MSPs and IT support companies to expand their managed services capabilities beyond traditional on-premise infrastructure to remotely monitor and manage their customers’ cloud-based solutions as well.

To learn more, visit www.gfi.com or portal.monitis.com, or send email to gfimax@gfi.com.

About Monitis

A leading provider of easy-to-use, pay-as-you-go, enterprise-class network and systems monitoring software as a service (SaaS) for IT support specialists. More than 80,000 users worldwide have chosen Monitis to increase uptime and user experience of their services and products. Their core product offerings include website monitoring, site load testing, transaction monitoring, application and database monitoring, cloud resource monitoring, and server and internal network monitoring. What makes Monitis’ software different is how fast it is to deploy, its flexible pricing and feature-rich technology that provides a comprehensive single-pane view of on-premise and off-premise infrastructure and applications.

About GFI Software

GFI Software provides web and mail security, archiving, backup and fax, networking and security software and hosted IT solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) via an extensive global partner community. GFI products are available either as on-premise solutions, in the cloud or as a hybrid of both delivery models. With award-winning technology, a competitive pricing strategy, and a strong focus on the unique requirements of SMEs, GFI satisfies the IT needs of organizations on a global scale. The company has offices in the United States, UK, Austria, Australia, Malta, Hong Kong, Philippines and Romania, which together support hundreds of thousands of installations worldwide. GFI is a channel-focused company with thousands of partners throughout the world and is also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

For more information:

Please email David Kelleher on dkelleher@gfi.com

GFI – Malta: Tel: +356 2205 2000; Fax: +356 21382419.

URL: http://www.gfi.com.

Davies Murphy Group

Please email Brian Alberti on gfi@daviesmurphy.com

GFI – US: Tel: +1-781-418-2403

Copyright © 2011 GFI Software. All rights reserved. All trademarks used are owned by their respective companies. To the best of our knowledge, all details were correct at the time of publishing; this information is subject to change without notice.

AFCOM, a data center association, polled nearly 400 managers and found a huge shift in attitudes about the Cloud. When the association conducted their poll in 2010, it found that only 15% of organizations had adopted a cloud infrastructure. This year, however, more than 36% of respondents implemented cloud computing and another 35% were seriously considering it.

Another major finding in the survey, which I read about in an article online, is that over 86% saw an increase in cloud-based applications versus three years ago. Interestingly, among other findings, 50% have no plans in place to replace damaged backup facilities onsite, for example, in the event of a disaster.

What does all this mean? It’s great news, first of all, that more companies are opting for the cloud for data storage. But, the finding that showed a lack of action in creating plans for data recovery just plain scares me.

If you’re going to embrace the Cloud for data management, you not only need protection against data loss, but you need something that’s going to keep guard 24/7 and can notify you when things go awry. That’s why Monitis, with more than a dozen monitoring stations around the world, fills the need for tens of thousands of companies.

Don’t take my word for it, though, check out these testimonials to read about how we protect your cloud-based data.

But should you assume that because you’ve made all your desktops mobile or virtual that that’s the end of your IT challenges? I guess you’ve figured out that the answer to that question is “no.”

Consider first the issue of connectivity. Does your cloud service provider have a good record of providing consistent up-time? It’s a pretty tough spot to be in when your employees start calling into IT saying: “Hey, my cloud desktop just went poof!”

My advice would be to go with a service provider with a diverse access infrastructure. You may consider working with a provider who can offer desktop caching. This way, you add mobility: users can take their physical desktop out on the road with them (let’s say, if they’re planning to work from 30,000 feet inside a 747) and then sync up with the cloud the next time they’re near a LAN, WAN or Internet/VPN service, advice that also comes from an article I read recently.

Wake up! Your Cloud is Crashing!

To keep your employees connected, I also recommend employing a warning device in the way of a 24/7 cloud-based monitoring tool. This will notify you if your cloud provider goes down — and with it your apps and database. These notifications can be sent to you, the IT pro, in just about any form you want, for example, email, Twitter, text, or even cell phone (for those late night notices, ugh!).

And lastly, notifications sent via the Cloud work even when your network is down, and they go through firewalls. So, there’s no chance you won’t find out something needs fixing — and fast!

Happy virtual desk-topping!

No, that’s not some alternative name for a meteorologist. Rather, it describes a new breed of “Cloud Brokers” that is emerging to take the place of systems integrators (SIs) and value-added resellers (VARs) — which used to play the role of “trusted advisor” to guide end users and help them select products as well as deploy and manage the technology.

A lot of the time, these companies were in reality channel partners for hardware and software vendors — acting on their behalf to sell and support products.

But in an article I read about the new phenomenon, these new breed of cloud advisors operate in a more transaction-oriented way, as what distinguishes today’s Cloud services is their on-demand capability. What that means is that organizations that want to migrate to the Cloud and its solutions expect a quicker time-to-value at a lower cost than traditional products. So, the job of todays’ Cloud advisor is to assist clients more quickly and economically than the old VARs.

Simultaneously, you have the development of online marketplaces (By the way, Google Marketplace just turned 1 years old!) where companies can buy Cloud solutions in whatever form — SaaS, PaaS and IaaS.

It’s good to know that if you need them, Cloud advisors are standing by ready to help you figure it all out and recommend purchases to get your business operating more efficiently technology-wise. It’s also good to know that once you’re on the Cloud, you can make sure your apps are running right, your website’s fast and your database is safe with cloudware monitoring systems like Monitis.

In 2007, IBM launched its “Blue Cloud” strategy, and the growing demand for cloud services is expected to increase the need for its servers, software and other services.

Palmisano Talks Big Money

IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, at an investor conference, said that the cloud is “the next technical shift in the enterprise.”

Like many cloud enterprises, IBM says much of its growth will come from the developing world — including China and India. In fact, according to an article I read about Palmisano’s statements, IBM is expecting 30% of its revenue to come from these emerging areas — up from an earlier estimation of 25%.

IBM is certainly a major force in the development and growth of the cloud, and that’s good news for us all because, with IBM’s success, more companies will come to trust cloud services and see the value that they represent — savings and IT efficiencies.

I predict that firms will also increasingly understand the need to keep a constant eye on its web-based businesses with superior cloudware. Monitoring services — everything from networks and servers to cloud platforms and web traffic and web load-testing — will become absolutely necessary for companies serious about growing their businesses online and keeping their customers happy.

Well, because one of our most important customer bases is academia, I was recently reading about top IT trends that higher-ed IT pros are predicting for 2011, and lo and behold there was something about Android devices and tablet technologies (the iPad) and how important they are for the new generation of students who rely on mobile devices in the classroom (no more notebooks…I mean the old-fashioned kind you write in with a pen!).

Rasmussen Has Big IT Development Plans for 2011

In the article, Hap Aziz, director for the school of technology and design at Rasmussen College in Wisconsin, said he plans this year to integrate more tablet technologies into his school’s classrooms in 2011. Aside from the iPad, Aziz sees the new slew of Android tablets as potential tools for students and educators.

“These Android devices are still somewhat pricey,” said Aziz, in the article, “but definitely show the democratization of technology (beyond just Apple products) and prove how portable and accessible innovation is becoming for college students.”

And on the Cloud front, the school will implement virtual labs and other Web-based classroom support tools.  For example, it is looking to digitize its library, and give students remote access to the data. Aziz acknowledged that many universities revere traditional libraries, but he noted that non-traditional students need state-of-the-art resources that go beyond the “traditional four walls and a roof.”

The IT initiatives will help the  school save money, and also give students a “consistent view of the curriculum matter and materials across the board,” said Aziz, and provide for simpler classroom management. “This consistency would be [impossible] to achieve in the traditional classroom environment, where students are geographically dispersed and working on different pieces of equipment with multiple software versions.”

Boy, campus life sure is different than when I went to school. I’m glad today’s generation is getting the full benefit of remote access to technology, and at the same time, enjoy the comfort and security of affordable server, network, cloud platform and other types of monitoring.

One observation I think is right on the mark is that the demands on networking are going through the roof as consumers and businesses increasingly take to the lure of new and improved technologies.

Capacity needs are climbing – not just from growing use of cloud tools and services, such as systems, transaction, cloud performance and other monitoring, but also from the ever-growing ranks of iPod users, virtual desktop users and the popularity of favorites like Salesforce.com SaaS.

PCMag’s blog writes that the show looks like it’s more crowded than it has been over the last few years (Good news for the convention industry and Las Vegas!), with a lot of presence from companies like F5, Riverbed and Bluecoat talking about their traditional networking solutions. Security, network traffic, and WAN acceleration were big topics.

But also among the buzz was cloud talk. HP had one of the biggest booths (and a second booth, actually, because of its recent acquisition of 3Com), and HP’s CTO for networking, Paul Congdon, talked about the role of the cloud in merging the two firms. He said HP’s focus is flexibility. In other words – using the same components to allow different companies to control different parts of the network. Converged infrastructures will clearly make it easier for large firms to build their own cloud platforms.

Software vendors were plentiful, too, and the topic du jour was apparently network management and virtualization. Both Citirix and VMware hawked their desktop virtualization tools – Xen Desktop and VMware View, respectively.

I predict we’ll see continued dependence on networks as the cloud industry grows – just as commerce has grown dependent on oil to run smoothly and relatively cheaply (and I hate to make this comparison as an oil slick wreaks disaster in the Gulf of Mexico). That’s why it’s so important to implement a system that continually monitors servers and networks. You don’t want to lose business to competitors or make your employees miserable with unnecessary computing problems!

a) Question the polls themselves or

b) Remind myself how very enthusiastic—and yet at the same time unsure—IT folks and their CIOs are about the cloud these days – despite all the talk about it.

The latest poll comes from ReliaCloud, a Minneapolis-based IT infrastructure developer. It surveyed 150 IT decision makers at small and large companies across the US, and found that three-quarters of them said development of cloud computing was a priority for 2010.

In the poll, a majority, 85% or so of decision makers were either currently implementing cloud computing services or had plans to do so within the next year. Further, 95% of IT decision makers think that cloud computing will either radically shift or have a definite impact on how technology services will be provided inside their companies.

Here’s the conflicting part about data storage. The survey found that the services that would be best suited to cloud computing were Web applications, databases and data storage.  

So why does one survey reveal IT folks saying “yes” to data storage on the cloud and another saying “no?” I think businesses are still torn up about issues like security and support, while at the same time they’re attracted to the cloud’s promises of up-time/high availability, performance and cost savings.

Let’s wait and see how cloud providers in 2010 act to reassure IT people on their doubts and – through development and enhancements – also affirm their positive beliefs.

Riverbed, which specializes in IT infrastructure (including WAN optimization) performance for enterprise networks, applications, and storage, predicts that this year more and more end users will demand to connect to corporate resources – no matter where they’re working. Among its forecast, it said: “As more cloud and virtualization projects come to fruition, users will be further away from their data. More vendors including Riverbed will step up to provide offerings for the cloud that address several key issues including service availability, data and vendor lock-in, security, data transfer bottlenecks and performance unpredictability.”

Sounds like much-needed help in a world where SaaS providers like Google get attacked in cyberspace because their cloud app (Gmail) customers are political dissidents. Safety, security of data – those are the kind of assurances that companies want about the cloud. Seems like I can’t say this enough!

More demand for WAN-optimized solutions will come, too, because the growing inventory of apps traversing the cloud will be content-rich, real-time and bandwidth-intensive, “as the use of collaboration and Web 2.0 applications become more widely utilized across distributed enterprises and virtual workgroups,” said Adam Davison, vice president of corporate sales and marketing at Expand Networks, in the story.

And Davison makes a good point that – in the face of increased demand for advanced WAN optimization solutions – IT folks are “already realizing that it is no longer just about providing acceleration, but about enabling enhanced levels of traffic visibility and control, and assuring the quality of the user experience across all these complex environments.”

So, seeking greater adherence to SLAs is part of the future, too, I’m glad to see. That’s a trend that I can confirm, too, providing monitoring services to companies whose end goal is to provide their customers with a seamless and positive solution.

There’s also an embedded viewer that lets you see all the files, just like you’d see in Google Docs (Personally, I like the above viewer better).

Why is embedding files anywhere on a website news-worthy or notable? As noted on readwriteweb.com, it’s one thing to upload and share documents online, but downloading them carries issues for companies and end-users.

For one, a company, out of concern for privacy, may not want their documents to be downloaded. Another: sometimes end-users just want the convenience of viewing something online, and that’s the extent of it – they don’t want to download it. They’re the ‘less-is-more’ kind. They don’t even like to carry around thumb drives.

But today’s workforce is different from that of even a few years ago. There are more home-based workers, and, much to Apple’s delight, iPhone sales (and other smart phones) are going through the roof. In short, people now have easier ways to access and collaborate on documents. That’s why these tools, from the likes of Box.net and Google are so important – and needed—these days.

Apparently, this ability to store, upload, collaborate and download (if one so chooses), is being called “cloud content management” by Box.net, yet another cloud buzzword.

If cloud content management (permit me to invent the acronym: CCM.) works smoothly, that gives enterprises and end-users a tremendous boost of confidence in the cloud, and I applaud that. But there are plenty of IT folks at both growing and large companies alike that still have reservations about the soundness and security of the cloud – whether it’s over the reliability of a platform or the safety of data.

So, even as these CCM tools multiply, so will services like cloud data center and cloud platform monitoring.