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.

1. Show them you’re on top of the game. Executives want proof that you’re assessing your cloud vendor relationship on an ongoing basis. One great proof you can show them, reports showing results of 24/7 monitoring. They should be easy to read, such as from a dashboard that includes plenty of graphics.

2. Tell them how you know that the cloud provider is protecting your data — and include information on your back-up plan.  One good way to reassure executives is by answering questions about where your data is stored, who has the right to access it and what back-up procedures you employ. Monitoring tools provide instant notification of outages and can help you be more confident about letting go of control of your data.

3. Be upfront about the investment. Everybody says cloud computing cuts costs. Well, maybe in the long run. Tell your executives that it takes time and money to assess providers to ensure their security system is top-notch, and that, once you take your data out from behind the firewall, you’ve got to replicate security controls — in some fashion — within the service provider’s environment. Yet, in the long-run, your maintenance, hardware and other costs will drop because you’re not managing servers anymore.  Even your monitoring solutions can be low-cost…even free.

How Fast is Your Site?

Studies have proven that the faster the functionality of your site, the more you increase page views and thus conversions and sales.

That’s why we offer a number of services to help you improve the performance of your site. For one, Monitis Website Check allows users to instantly check the availability of a website and web page load speed (via HTTP requests) from multiple locations worldwide.  Enterprises use Monitis Website Check tool to instantly check their web server from outside their server’s network. We’ve even made widgets so users can put our tool in their blog or website administration areas.

Our Full Page Load Check also allows users to check how fast their sites fully load, as well as up-time and response time. We also help companies determine how well their sites can handle sudden spikes in traffic via Web Load Test.

Now, it seems Google is bolstering its game with Page Speed Online, a quick, simple way to measure the speed of your site directly from the web (Previously, the tool was only available as a browser add-on.)  It seems that Google, like Monitis, understands the distinction between just measuring response time from measuring full load time — including the download time customers experience for images and Java script.

Google’s new product, though, can only tell you if your page speed is slow; it can’t fix it. Page Speed Online gives you a score out of 100 and then breaks down suggestions on how to boost your speed by order of importance. We can’t fix it for you, either. But that’s why Monitis also offers easy to read dashboard reporting so you can figure out what’s keeping you from fully maximizing your business.

Our menu of notifications, too, can help by instantly alerting you to downtime and outages.

Seems like Google and Monitis are on the same track here!

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!

Boston: a New Cloud Hub

Boston, in the U.S. region of New England, is getting quite a reputation as a Cloud hub and resource center.

Apart from Silicon Valley in California, there are a growing number of cloud-related companies based now in Massachusetts, for example, EMC Corp. and Akamai Technologies. Other West Coast companies, like Box.net (a cloud content management company) and Cisco Systems, have offices in the Boston area.

“These things start with everybody talking about it, and nobody knows what it is,” said Larry Bohn, managing director of Boston’s General Catalyst Partners, in an article that I read. “But it’s no longer a collective hallucination. People know what it is, and it works.”

The Yankee Group predicts cloud services sold to corporate customers will grow from $9.2 billion to $22.3 billion in 2014.

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.

What was the source of this error and massive inconvenience? It was a bug that caused cascade deletes across “key models” within Cloudkick’s system, according to the company’s blog.

What is a cascade delete? Wikipedia defines it this way: “In the context of relational databases, a foreign key is a referential constraint between two tables. The foreign key identifies a column or a set of columns in one (referencing) table that refers to a set of columns in another (referenced) table.

“The columns in the referencing table must be the primary key or other candidate key in the referenced table…. Whenever rows in the master (referenced) table are deleted, the respective rows of the child (referencing) table with a matching foreign key column will get deleted as well. This is called a cascade delete.”

In Cloudkick’s case, because of a programming mistake, during cascade delete, when the IP address was deleted “it cascaded to nodes, then to tags, then to the monitors. “If the IP address on your server changed while the bug was in production, your monitors and tags were deleted,” Cloudkick’s blog reported.

We at Monitis had similar problems with cascade delete in the early days when we started our free service – Mon.itor.us, back about five years ago. We also partially lost our customers’ data.

Even today, it’s hard for me to think about it; it was a tough lesson to learn. But what we found out was that cascade delete could be dangerous — especially when you’re providing a service to the mass market.

Since then, we’ve not only discontinued the cascade delete function, but we’re also not deleting any data; we’re just changing the status. Heck, storage is cheap enough; so we prefer to keep it rather than delete and archive it.

Although it is useful in some cases, cascade delete may be too risky for mission-critical, large-scale systems.

Requests for IT Dollars Can be Hard Medicine to Swallow

I recently read about a blog post in the Harvard Business Review that gives CIOs advice on giving unpleasant news to their CEOs — such as: “We need $1 million to move our enterprise to the Cloud.”

Basically, it’s sound advice, and urges CIOs to copy doctors who must give patients, such as terminally ill people, the bad news about their condition. Yes, there are plenty of people out there who have had the misfortune of hooking up with insensitive doctors with bad bedside manners, but hold your judgment for a minute while you read about this college professor’s advice.

I didn’t know this, but apparently medical students are taught to deliver bad news through a system called SPIKES, which is a process designed to assess and help a patient’s reaction to negative medical news. Only then can an effective treatment strategy be offered.  Here are three out of seven steps:

• Understand what the CEO understands about your enterprise. It will be easier on you both if you’ve given the chief executive a risk analysis of whatever problem you’re discussing.
• Make some special time for delivering the news. Just as a good doctor will do, deliver your bad news in one uninterrupted session — with plenty of time built in for questions — so that there’s no possibility the CEO will misunderstand or walk away with the wrong information.
• Bring company. (Ever notice on TV shows, there are always two doctors giving a patient bad news?) As an IT person, you’re more apt to be taken seriously (instead of being written off as a geek) if you bring along a senior executive from a business unit that would benefit the most from an increased investment, say, the head of sales, who could increase productivity with cloud-based apps and data.

We here at Monitis would like to add one more piece of advice: Along with the bad news about investment,  make sure you mention the good news about ways to make that investment pay off — such as cloud-based monitoring of your website, servers, network, apps, transactions and the end-user experience. It’ll make that medicine go down a whole lot smoother.

For more advice on how to make CEOs good patients when it comes to unwelcome IT news, click here.