Schools in East Sussex are on a robust wide area network (WAN). Yet when East Sussex County Council ICT Schools Services wanted to implement network monitoring and client management, it was careful to avoid a solution that was dependent on the WAN. So the ICT ultimately became a managed network monitoring provider, selling optional services to participating schools.

While most of the schools in East Sussex buy some IT services from the ICT, they don’t particularly want to be forced into doing so, especially at a time when many of the 192 schools in the district are becoming independent academies or federated schools.

“It is a different political environment we are facing, and that was one of the key considerations that we had when we were looking at how we redeveloped our services. Gone are the days when we could provision something centrally and enforce that on schools,” said Kris Scruby, ICT Schools Services manager.

Read the full article

by James Fletcher l July 29, 2011 l No Comments »

Interested in seeing the CentraStage product in action? Why not join one of our upcoming webinars… we’ve got a few scheduled so the choice is yours!

August

Wed, Aug 3, 2011 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM BST
Wed, Aug 17, 2011 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM BST
Wed, Aug 31, 2011 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM BST

September

Wed, Sep 7, 2011 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM BST
Wed, Sep 28, 2011 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM BST

October

Wed, Oct 12, 2011 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM BST
Wed, Oct 19, 2011 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM BST

In the event you can’t make one of the above, or you feel a custom demonstration would suit your needs best, please contact us sales@centrastage.com

by James Fletcher l July 20, 2011 l No Comments »

Every morning I catch up with what has happened in the market by reading a series of blogs, news feeds, tweets, facebook posts, linkedin group message and all the messaging groups I’m part of. This morning I woke up to a very interesting post by Joe Panettieri at MSPmentor, “How Much Can MSPs Charge for Mobile Managed Services?“.

It got me thinking how many of you out there are providing Mobile Managed Services, is it something you’ll look to provide in the future, or just something you’re not even interested in.
(more…)

by James Fletcher l July 20, 2011 l No Comments »

Within the next month or so we are going to give away some of our best technology for free. Loads of it – in fact as much as you can eat. You’ll have to wait for the launch for all the details but I can tell you that our lead agent developer Kevin @deepsquatter is not entirely pleased. Thousands of hours of R&D, millions of lines of code, two cars and one baby later, and now we are going to give it away.

Here at CentraStage HQ our aim is to build a successful business by adding value to yours. The vast majority of our customers are IT service providers who make a living by making smart decisions quickly. They are the unsung heroes of the modern world, paid up members the much maligned geeks who keep the digital wheels of the world turning. We’re proud to be part of that group and we like to think that our product, be it even in the smallest way, helps to oil those wheels on a daily basis.

Smart decisions rely on accurate information and in the IT world that means having an up to date audit of the systems you manage. We have always said that “Every Device Counts” and now we are going to stand by that by removing any barrier there may be to deploying the agent to all devices on your network. We’re convinced that by providing you with the information you need to do your job effectively is the fastest way to add value to what you provide to your customers.

So while price is an almost arbitrary intersection of supply, demand and packaging, value can be seen as benefits over price. Good information provides serious benefits, and at a price point of zero, delivers infinite value. I’m still not going to spell it out completely, but if you’re contemplating investing in an IT audit tool, I’d hold back for just a while if I were you.

by Ian van Reenen l July 20, 2011 l No Comments »

When we started CentraStage we were in agreement that the platform should support all manner of devices – computers, phones, TV’s, routers, etc. And it would be exclusively cloud based, and it would run on Linux. Then we started taking orders. Quite early in the product lifecycle I might add, although that’s a story on it’s own and best saved for another post. The thing is, all our early orders were for an on premise Windows based solution to manage Windows computers. Our customers were all MSP’s managing Windows, and didn’t have Linux skills to manage an internal Linux server. Having started the company without funding we were not about to turn those orders away and so the focus shifted to Windows exclusively. Now I’m not a Windows basher by any means, it’s a good operating system and I can only imagine the challenge of producing an operating system that is expected to run on just about any box, be it a high end blade server or a build-your-own pc that someone has put together from the bargain bins. But damn, keeping my own devices fully patched is enough of a headache (yes, yes, I need to reboot to complete the update but can’t you see I’m in the middle of something – and probably will be for the foreseeable future..?!?) so providing a neat and painfree way to manage Windows patches via CentraStage was never going to be simple.

Microsoft provides a fairly robust way for users to manage patches themselves via the Windows Update service and so, in line with our early and often policy, we included the ability to manage these settings on behalf of users. Within CentraStage Policies you will find a way to set the Microsoft Update policy for various groups and Windows flavours – plus a few reboot options that we felt they should have included. You can also point devices to a specific WSUS server if thats the way you roll your patch management. This covers the requirements of many of our users but falls short of covering them all. You see the thing with patches is sometimes you don’t want them all, and for those people the only option has been to run your own WSUS server and control which patches are approved and released. That’s a massive task if you are an MSP with a number of customers all fetching updates from your WSUS server. Which sort of rules out WSUS altogether then.

Some of our users like to turn off automatic WSUS/Windows Updates altogether and manage the deployment of patches themselves. There are some very good reasons to do this and it is something that we’re going to provide for within CentraStage. The first step along this path is available in v4.1.1 released today (July 11 2011). V4.1.1 includes Windows Patch Reporting to report which patches are missing from any of the devices you manage. Drill down to a device and have a look at the Software tab. There is a new View called Missing Patches and in there you will find the results of a check for which patches are installed on the device against all patches released by either Windows Updates or the WSUS server the device is configured to use. There is also an extra line item in the Security Center widget on the Profile Summary page that totals up the missing patches across all devices in that Profile. So, not hugely useful on it’s own but at least informative and can be used to identify potential problems. From here (very soon) we are going to provide you with a method to firstly force devices to fetch and install selected patches only, and also to deliver them via CentraStage as an option. We’re not going to become a sort of WSUS server ourselves but we do have some very sneaky plans as to how this can be otherwise be achieved. I won’t spoil the surprise just yet

This means your third option for Windows patch management will be to turn off automatic updates, and then as missing patches are reported you can selectively release or ignore them via the CentraStage CSM. This should cover more bases and hopefully satisfy the requirements of many more users. Missing patches will be reported at the device, profile and system level. Of course this is only needed if you can’t use the Windows Update service and don’t run a WSUS server – that functionality is already catered for.

by Ian van Reenen l July 19, 2011 l No Comments »