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Kaseya's IT philosophy appeals to traditional IT professionals seeking to start a managed services practice. Instead of a product, the company offers a fully functional framework that is available online and has a 30-day expiration license. The framework can be downloaded without the bother of being contacted by sales reps.

Kaseya's Web-based framework for automating IT monitoring consists of a lightweight stateless agent and a Kaseya server, which is the main management console for the framework, and manages all the agents.

The Kaseya server was installed on a Windows 2003 server, running IIS and SQL Server. The server is simply a Web application that interacts with the framework. To secure communication between MSPs and remote clients, the Kaseya server uses SSL to encrypt the access to the agents and its Web page. The agents use a 256-bit encryption with RC4 rolling session keys. The agent communication is outbound to the server, so there are no ports that need remapping at a client side. Since the agents do not listen, they are not susceptible to attacks. All the traffic is managed through the 256-bit encrypted pipe.

Agents are distributed to every end-point PC and server that gets managed. The agents are also deployed on machines that manage network devices and appliances, such as firewalls, routers, switches and printers. Once deployed, agents operate through any corporate network, including the Internet, and communicate back to its original Kaseya server. Regardless of how many computers and locations a client has, the Kaseya server creates its own virtual managed network. No VPN or remote server is needed at any client.

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The Kaseya server can be deployed in a matter of 15 minutes. After installing the server, engineers were able to deploy agents on two networks over the Internet in minutes. The deployment was so easy that only remote access was needed temporarily to install the agents.

Because the Kaseya server is Web-based, technicians can access it from anywhere. The agents operate independently and in a stateless manner, so no input is ever required by technicians. The agents execute in unattended access at all times.

In addition, the Kaseya server requires no network restructure or reconfiguration. Conversely, Microsoft's System Essentials requires a structured and contiguous network because it relies on probes to monitor networks. Essentially, Kaseya builds its own secured network from the very beginning.

The server's dashboards are easy to use, because they maintain the same look and feel for all the features and functions. MSPs are able to have full control of what is displayed and what capability they need to make available to servers and end users. A configuration is based on a service agreement with clients.

The Kaseya server can be highly customized by MSPs to allow end users to access information about their PCs.

For instance, users can create tickets and view their help-desk tickets on a Kaseya portal. End users can send e-mails and chat with technicians. Through the end-user portal, users

can also remotely control their own desktops and transfer files.

The Kaseya framework provides group-level access to the agents, so technicians can roll out configurations to thousands of machines at the same time. The company also provides automated solutions that cover spyware, viruses and patches.

In addition, the framework provides IT service automation for asset management, proactive maintenance and remote management. The framework also integrates with Autotask and Tigerpaw Software.

About 80 percent of Kaseya's revenue comes from ISVs, VARs and systems integrators that are transitioning from break/fix services to managed services.

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