Help Arrives for Managing Cloud Applications

With cloud computing, small and medium businesses can offload deployment and maintenance of company applications to third parties. However, one challenge is these corporations want to be sure that the applications are running efficiently. Consequently, LTech, a Bridgewater, N.J. solutions provider, has stepped in to try and fill that void.The company announced LTech CloudManage, which monitors the performance of cloud or hybrid IT infrastructures based on Amazon Web Services and VMWare-based servers. The service relies on a mix of off-the-shelf and proprietary management tools to provide a number of functions. It offers continuous, on-demand monitoring of servers and Web applications. The company runs scheduled back-ups of cloud application data to ensure the availability of corporate data. In case problems arise either on the customers site or in the cloud, LTech provides disaster recovery capabilities. Pricing for the service starts at $750 per month  and the vendor plans to expand its reach to other cloud platforms in the future.

Management tools tend to be an area that matures toward the end of a product life cycle. Typically, vendors put base systems in place first and determine how to manage their products a bit later. That scenario is playing out in the cloud computing market where it can be difficult at times for small and medium businesses to determine how well their systems are performing.

So LTech has focused on a market with a well defined need. However, one challenge the company will face is its small size and lack of name recognition. Established management vendors are enhancing their products to glean what is happening in the cloud and possibly could develop similar service as the market evolves.