Singlestep, NetSolve Seek VAR Partners

Singlestep Technologies is touting its Unity software to potential partners as a means to upsell into existing accounts.

Unity is a network management integration application that gathers information from disparate network management systems such as IBM's Tivoli, Hewlett-Packard's OpenView, Computer Associates International's Unicenter and homegrown systems, and organizes the information based on criteria and policies set up by the systems administrator.

"Our software gives partners the ability to go back to a customer and say, 'Let's leverage your existing investment in your network management systems by making sense of all the information those systems are randomly spitting out,' " said Chris Noble, president and CEO of Singlestep, Seattle.

Singlestep is targeting solution providers such as Seattle-based Cerius Technology Group, which specializes in OpenView as well as HP hardware and storage.

"Singlestep's product extends OpenView's capabilities by gathering the knowledge in a manner that creates the most value for the administrator," said Chris Wong, technology manager at Cerius.

NetSolve, another network management player, is also recruiting partners. NetSolve remotely manages network infrastructure including routers, switches, servers, firewalls, intrusion detection and applications such as VoIP.

NetSolve, Austin, Texas, is developing a program to work with large systems integrators such as IBM Global Services and is looking to enter into OEM relationships with the likes of Cisco Systems, Dell and HP, as well as regional VARs such as Berbee, Madison, Wis.

Berbee has an infrastructure services group built around IBM, Cisco and Microsoft technology. It also owns two data centers and develops applications.

Berbee is now managing converged networks with the help of NetSolve. "We've built a strong opportunity around our converged VoIP offering to support customers coming out of traditional legacy into VoIP and monitoring it proactively through to resolution using NetSolve," said Paul Shain, Berbee CEO.