Network Monitoring Made Klir

Klir's Solution Providers Network, which was slated to be announced this week, is the centerpiece of the company's 100 percent indirect sales model, said Bryan Smoltz, director of marketing at the Seattle-based vendor. The program coordinates marketing, sales and service support for partners and ensures up-to-date training on Klir's network monitoring solution. An appliance running the solution is planned for next year, said Smoltz.

Partners can sell Klir remote network monitoring as a managed service using the Klir Trusted Advisor Portal. The portal is a hosted application that enables partners to monitor their customers' networks remotely without having to install network management software on their or their customers' premises.

Katie Brown, manager of channel relations at Microtech Information Systems, a Rochester, N.Y., solution provider, said Microtech recently began selling Klir's product offering as a managed service for her customers.

"We were looking for a vendor to give us the ability to sell monitoring and provide the service, and with Klir we were fully deployed in a couple of hours," said Brown, who added that no additional servers or infrastructure were needed to get up and running, thanks to the Trusted Advisor Portal.

The technology for the Klir service is based on software that drops in on the customer's existing network rather than deploying agents onto every device on the customer's network, Smoltz said. Klir software communicates via a secure VPN back to a data center run by Klir on behalf of the solution provider. Beyond that, a series of business intelligence tools let solution providers show their customers where performance problems on the network are—key because solution providers can use this tool to stimulate demand for network and server upgrades.

Filling a need in the midmarket is where the vendor sees itself, said Smoltz.

"We see a clear gap in terms of the visibility tools that people have in the midmarket," he said. "They have an enterprise-class problem and small-company-like budgets."

Dedicated partner support, technical support, demand generation and lead registration are all components of the new Klir channel program.

Private-labeling and multiple customer monitoring through a one-to-many framework are available for the Klir Trusted Advisor Portal, Smoltz said.