PacketTrap's Remote Monitoring Keeps Networks At Top Speed

Company: PacketTrap Networks

Headquarters: San Francisco

Technology Sector: Networking

Key Product: PacketTrap MSP

Year Founded: 2006

Number of Channel Partners: 400-plus

Ideal Channel Partner: Small business-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: PacketTrap addresses a crucial pain point with a product that creates a services play, provides good margins and was built with solution providers in mind.

The Lowdown: Bottlenecks on a network can be just as time consuming as bottlenecks on the highway. That's why PacketTrap Networks has created an offering that allows solution providers to manage customer networks.

PacketTrap MSP is a downloadable application that allows solution providers to take a magnifying glass to customer networks and identify any potential problems or clogs that may take place.

"When traffic causes congestion on a network, that's a problem," said Steve Goodman, CEO of San Francisco-based PacketTrap. "Our product allows solution providers to monitor and manage everything on the network and creates network transparency."

PacketTrap MSP

That means that if a customer's shop is experiencing sluggish network performance, PacketTrap MSP allows a solution provider to identify which Web sites may be slowing everyone down. "Our software lets a solution provider or MSP see what specific Web sites are causing havoc on an SMB's network and where the problems are coming from," said Goodman. "PacketTrap MSP can see if traffic from YouTube, ESPN or another site is slowing down performance."

PacketTrap's software takes advantage of a SaaS model, meaning the company can host it or a solution provider can download it into a specific location, providing flexible deployment. Solution providers have the option of deploying a single instance of PacketTrap MSP on a network to monitor the whole thing or the software can be deployed on individual agents to provide more granularity.

Solution providers can be confident that PacketTrap is a channel friendly company as well, said Goodman. The executive staff of the vendor all used to be members of the SonicWall team, he said.

"Our architecture is purpose-built for a channel partners," said Goodman. "We understand the issues that solution providers have in their business. We provide dedicated support and the option to build services in to create a good margin."

Finally, the pricing on PacketTrap MSP should be compelling to channel partners. There is no contract that needs to be signed and no cancellation fee. Interested partners simply have to download the software and pay a monthly fee.