This is one of those times when you just have to say, "Why didn't someone think of this before? It's brilliant." We have had policy management around for quite a while. The idea of making the systems we use comply with policies for their users is nothing new. But what about the people who manage the systems? Would policy management help them too? That is what Kaseya is all about. The Kaseya products manage the configuration, support, security, compliance, patching, and on and on for the IT shop.

IT engineers do dozens of repetitive tasks each day. This is inefficient, leads to staff burnout and can be error-prone. But you cannot get away from those tasks. Unfortunately, they provide a bedrock on which everything else must rest. If the servers are not patched, for example, security tasks resulting from unpatched vulnerabilities increase.

While it certainly is true that there are lots of products that do the individual tasks and do them well, Kaseya has taken the next big step by integrating everything together with a single, solid, enterprise-grade policy management system. There are a lot of side benefits as well. For example, this approach increases the number of machines and systems that a single engineer can manage. Another side benefit is that everything the IT engineer must do is displayed on a single piece of glass. Instead of a screen for each product, there is just one for the management system.

Kaseya has two primary target markets: IT operations and service providers. For service providers, the product provides automation of the things that service providers need to address. The service provider edition addresses, for example, the unique challenge of managing the resources the service provider provides for customers on a per customer basis.

If overall management is not for you, but you have a smaller subset of the problem, Kaseya has focused versions of its products for backup and disaster recovery, endpoint security, patch management and inventory management. The company's biggest business innovation is its pricing model. Kaseya provides licenses initially at very favorable prices and lets the customer amortize the cost over 48-60 months. This allows customers to address very large enterprises without a huge financial hit at the start.

AT A GLANCE

Flagship product: Kaseya IT Management Suite

Vendor: Kaseya

Cost: starts at $120

Innovation: Applying enterprise-style policy management to the IT shop

Greatest strength: Vision to solve a tough problem with a proven approach