What's Hot: Products From Formatta, NetworkStreaming, Spiceworks, and Ascendview

Online Forms Made Easy
Formatta E-Forms Suite

With 15 remote offices, mycompany was wasting alot of time, money, andpaper on internal request forms. Eachoffice was required to send checkrequests, vacation requests, and soon, to our home office in Austin, Texas.We needed an online forms solutionthat could streamline this processand offer some of the componentsthat other solutions lacked, such asa way for users to sign documents,track versions of a form, and exportdata into Excel and SQL Server. Wedecided on Formatta E-Forms Suite,which bundles four components—theFormatta E-Forms Manager, FormattaFiller, Formatta Server, and FormattaDesigner 7.0—into one package.

E-Forms Manager lets our IT staffupdate existing forms, and when auser signs an updated form, previously downloaded forms are automatically updated. This is a hugetime-saver when you have over130 users and document versionsfloating around. The solution alsointegrates nicely with our existingActive Directory environment,which eliminates having to createadditional security for end users.You can also use LDAP or Formatta's own authentication. TheServer component encrypts thesigning process, and this means Idon't have to use SSL when I publish forms. The Designer component lets me import existing PDFforms or create new ones andconvert them to online forms,with minimal modifications. I'vebeen looking for a solution likethis for two years, and Formattais the only vendor that provideseverything I need in one package.

Reader: Carlton Whitmore, Systems analyst
Product: Formatta E-Forms Suite
Company: Formatta
Contact: www.formatta.com

Connect to Remote Computers Behind a Firewall
NetworkStreaming's SupportDesk appliance 300

We were looking fora better way for ourcompany's Help desk to provide remote support to ourtraveling workforce. We ran intodifficulties when we had to remotelyconnect to and fix computers foremployees who were connected atclient sites behind a firewall, whichis a common problem with manyremote-support solutions.

Our solution had been to walk users through step-by-step instructions to troubleshoot and fix the problems themselves. But with NetworkStreaming SupportDeskAppliance 300, I can connect to any machine that has Internet accessand take over the machine quickly. Our users love the product becauseit makes their lives so much easier. A user can be in a meeting or outto lunch while a support technician accesses his or her computer andsolves the problem.

Unlike other products, SupportDesk lets us connect to remotecomputers even when they're behind a firewall, and it doesn't requireus to leave a port open solely for SupportDesk. Additionally, if a connection is lost, SupportDesk automatically reconnects with the supportdesk technician responsible for that job. Another benefit is that wedon't need to preinstall a client on a user's machine. A client is installedwhile we're connected, and when the session is closed, the client isautomatically uninstalled.

Reader: Asif Shaikh, Senior technical supportengineer
Product: SupportDesk Appliance300
Company: NetworkStreaming
Contact: www.networkstreaming.com

A Free Tool That Monitors, Inventories, and Reportson Your Infrastructure
Spiceworks IT Desktop

I started using Spiceworks ITDesktop when it was still inbeta. It's a free tool that provides a remarkably complete viewof all devices connected to my network without using any agents. Imanage 50 workstations and 14servers, so I'm a long way fromhaving the budget, manpower, andtime that the enterprise-orientedtools require. Spiceworks gives meinformation on computer hardware configuration; all software, services, and hotfixes on each computer; all connected devices; offlineservers; low disk space; plus hardware and software and low-toneralerts. All this information is presented in an interface that's easy tounderstand. I'm also really impressed with the quality of the supportforums and the energy of the moderators whenever I have any questions about the software. This is a great tool for anyone who needs allthe basic information on his or her systems without spending a ton ofmoney or time learning a commercial tool. IT Desktop will serve mewell into the future.

(Editor's note: Spiceworks isn't limited to just a monitoring andinventory solution. The software can run reports for all installed software, trouble tickets, and disk usage. You can use predefined reportsor create your own from scratch. All reports can be exported to PDF orMicrosoft Office Excel formats.)

Reader: Jonathan Chorney,Systems administrator
Product: Spiceworks IT Desktop
Company: Spiceworks
Contact: www.spiceworks.com

Combine Data from Multiple Sources forTroubleshooting Anomalies
Ascendview's WildMetrix

As a consultant, I've seenmy share of products thathelp troubleshoot anomalies in network infrastructures, andthey all have their good points andbad points. But Ascendview's Wild-Metrix has one thing that no otherproduct I've seen has—the ability tocombine data from any source ontoone time-oriented graph, includingperformance counters, event logentries, and SNMP events. One ofmy clients was having problemswith in-house ASP Web applications that would crash and then requirerestarting Microsoft IIS. Without WildMetrix, I had to use Microsoft'sPerformance Monitor and wade through the different pieces and wasleft with nothing to correlate them with. But with WildMetrix, I can take the same performance counter data and correlate that data on the samegraph with individual Web page counters and determine what a specificWeb page was doing to cause an application to crash. I've also used thesoftware to determine when an Active Directory Group had its membership changed by correlating the security event logs on the domaincontrollers with service account failures from the system event log.

On one occasion, end users reported intermittent slowness withExchange Server. WildMetrix was able to correlate event logs and system counters to determine that several antivirus and defragmentationruns were running simultaneously, which caused a low level of freeRAM for the server. Without WildMetrix, seeing all of this would havebeen nearly impossible.

Reader: Buzzy Winter, Senior certifiedconsultant
Product: WildMetrix
Company: Ascendview
Contact: www.wildmetrix.com