Simplify and Automate Network Problem Resolution with Perspective

If you're a beleaguered IT guy (or gal) struggling to keep up with the daily concerns of your network, you need a tool that simplifies and even automates those essential network-management tasks. Particularly in the clutches of this economy, a tool that you can set and (virtually) forget has a lot going for it.

Which is why I've responded strongly to ScriptLogic's Perspective product—a full-featured, end-to-end network management and application monitoring solution. Known for its catchy "Point, Click, Done!" motto, ScriptLogic has recently introduced further user-friendly functionality into Perspective, giving IT admins more features to help then rapidly monitor and remedy network and system concerns.

I spoke with Nick Cavalancia, vice president of Windows Management at ScriptLogic, about Perspective today, and he spoke of Perspective's ability to address needs that many businesses are feeling today: "We're committed to that 'Point, Click, Done' phrase. The president of our company isn't the most techy guy out there, and he was able to get Perspective up and running within 10 minutes."

Once it's set up, Perspective lets IT admins automatically baseline, monitor, and analyze network problems in real-time from a central location. And underneath the surface simplicity lies a host of comprehensive alerting and automatic remediation features. Perspective can automatically take action to restore services when a failure occurs, thanks to another new feature: close integration with ScriptLogic’s Help Desk Authority, a Help desk ticket tracking solution. Perspective can restart applications or services, reboot servers, launch self-healing scripts, or set scheduled actions for routine maintenance—all based on a predefined chain of actions created by Help Desk Authority, which is called a “knowledgebase.”

“ScriptLogic solutions are often configured to work together to save IT administrators time and free them up to work on more strategic initiatives,” said Cavalancia. “IT administrators can now automate the knowledgebase configured in Help Desk Authority to trigger Perspective to remediate issues before they even reach the Help desk team. If an issue remains, administrators know why it’s been routed to them and know what specific steps have already been taken to fix the issue. The result is a faster fix.”

A particularly valuable asset at ScriptLogic is its user community, according to Cavalancia. "We're always asking, 'How can we fix your next pain?'  We have user groups, we have means for soliciting feedback online, we very much cater to our users' needs. In fact, we brag on the fact that our customers are just one degree away from us. We know our customers by name. And our developers are literally a door away from tech support. That's how we know that we're hitting right pain points."

Check out Perspective (featuring Help Desk Authority integration) at the ScriptLogic website. Perspective is priced per monitored network device and Help Desk Authority is priced per Help desk technician.