ManageEngine, a provider of IT management tools for SMBs and startups, is hiring engineering resources as part of its ongoing investment in India, said Vidya Vasu, head – ManageEngine PitStop, to Infotech Lead.
The company is boosting its investment in R&D and engineering in India. A growth in the number of start-ups in India in the last few years has opened up a lot of market opportunities here, Vasu added.
ManageEngine is offering free-forever editions of their software to startups, solopreneurs and small businesses. The company will continue to provide that through its community ManageEngine PitStop. It provides users with a platform to exchange and share information among their peers in the industry.
The industry is consolidating in terms of IT infrastructure and the way in which the IT resources are managed.
“To meet the challenges that keep cropping up, ManageEngine has always kept pace by aligning and scaling our solutions to meet the market needs. We will continue to focus our efforts on R&D and engineering, enabling us to embrace new challenges and stay on top of things,” Vasu added.
ManageEngine sees great market opportunities in data center consolidation, mobility, virtualization and cloud. The ability of their tools and solutions to leverage the industry standard and third-party proprietary technology to provide management functions has helped the company stay in the forefront, Vasu said.
“Startups and SMBs like our ‘try-before-you-buy’ approach and keep coming back for bigger deployments as their IT infrastructure expands,” Vasu said. “There is a large segment of users that make-do with the fully-functional free-forever editions of our premium products. For these enterprises, it is just a question of upgrading the license in the event of expansion.”
The dynamic IT landscape adds more dimensions to the way IT is managed. ManageEngine’s solutions are designed to absorb these changes seamlessly.
“Our challenge lies in continuing to keep our solutions simple, where the deployment works on a DIY (Do It Yourself) mode, unlike the complex alternatives where hand-holding is required right from installation to setting up to managing the critical resources.”
Commenting on ManageEngine’s Freemium offers, Vasu said the company has been offering free tools for over 8 years now. Free tools are a great way of nurturing a good IT management ecosystem and are beneficial to the company as well as its users.
For example, it allows ManageEngine to gain insights on customers’ needs and enables them to plan for the long haul. It gives easy access to users as opposed to laborious and tedious approach of reaching out over phone or e-mails where not all users like to respond with feedback. Free tools are also a great way of reaching out to a large mass.
Customers of ManageEngine’s Freemium tools also get free support from the company.
ManageEngine believes enterprise IT management need not really be over-the-top-expensive. A recent survey conducted across ManageEngine’s free tools users revealed that while around 40 percent of our users were from startups or small businesses, whopping 60 percent users were from the mid and large enterprises.
The survey also found that the top three industries embracing the company’s free offering are IT and Technology (30 percent), Banking & Finance and Health Care (20 percent each), and Government and Education industry (12 percent each).
ManageEngine free tools complement the existing set of solutions. SNMP MibBrowser is one example of a free tool that falls into this category.
Vasu said, “For users who would like to perform a couple of routine tasks, albeit on a regular basis, it would be an exercise in futility to install a full blown solution. It is for this segment of users that we’d like to cater to with our light-weight free tools. This free tools suite also has a few mobile apps which lets admins perform critical, yet routine tasks. Windows Health Monitor, Ping tool etc., are some popular apps.”