Bay Dynamics Acts As Vendor With Launch Of IT Analytics

Good VARs often make good vendors. It's a perspective that Bay Dynamics has come to appreciate as it takes that leap with the launch of its own product.

The San Francisco-based solution provider took its first steps in the vendor space with the recent release of IT Analytics for Microsoft System Center, officially on the market at the end of last month.

At its core, IT Analytics, which Bay Dynamics touts as the first enterprise add-on to Microsoft System Center, is a reporting tool that offers simplified access and rapid assembly and manipulation of enterprise data.

Targeting IT managers and analysts, the product provides snapshots and the ability to drill down to obtain specific requested information with multi-dimensional ad-hoc analysis, key performance indicators, and graphical trending capabilities.

Feris Rifai, Bay Dynamics CEO, said the company was inspired to create the tool after seeing enterprise customers buckling under the weight of complicated data collections and flummoxed by the complexity of underlying databases housing critical but disparate information.

His observations were reinforced, he said, after seeing the tool's eventual reception in the marketplace. "It wasn't just that people liked it, but people needed it," he said. "Enterprise customers spend so much money and still don’t have a solution."

But what really sets the product apart is its reliance on Online Analytics Processing (OLAP) technology, Rifai said, which facilitates a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface that allows users to easily tool through System Center without extensive prior knowledge of databases or third-party custom reporting and then transform the raw data into actionable information on the fly.

Rifai said that he had noticed that IT departments were forced to come up with creative ways to manage and track user performance. And often reports took a long time to create and export, and required multiple applications and sources, which ultimately took a toll on the IT help desk performance and caused the information to be outdated by the time it was delivered.

Meanwhile, channel partners who have tried the System Center with the new add-on, such as SHI, a solution provider headquartered in Piscataway, N.J., maintain that IT Analytics' ease of use is a welcome change compared to Microsoft's current System Center reporting tool, which some partners have said was "not up to par."

"You're able to manipulate massive amounts of data in a very short time, which is not possible with the tools that are out there," said Anthony Suffness, technical support manager for SHI. "It adds a lot of value to the data. This basically gave us the tools to effectively measure it."

Those kinds of insights are some of the advantages of being on both sides of the vendor/solution provider fence. Rifai said that with its enhanced perspective, Bay Dynamics, which just completed its 10th year in the industry, was easily able to identify a need in the market and create a unique solution that fit the bill.

Next: Bay Dynamics Has Insights Into Channel Benefits

That enriched perspective from being both a reseller and service provider has also enabled Bay Dynamics to recognize the value and benefit of building a strong channel, while avoiding what potentially could be mistakes or conflicts of interest, such as concurrently building both a direct and indirect sales force, Rifai said.

For distribution, Bay Dynamics has adopted a two-tier model, and partnered with VARs, LARs and distributors such as Synnex, CDW, and Softchoice, in order to reach target Microsoft System Center clients and prospective clients in the midmarket to enterprise and public sector spaces.

"We want to be reliant on our VARs," Rifai said. "Our knowledge has really been a great asset to us. What we're not doing is saying, 'We have to go do this on our own and build a direct sales force,' as a lot of companies do. That's definitely something we're staying away from because of our deep understanding of the channel."