http://www.mspcomparison.com/ http://www.mspcomparison.com/images/stories/web_links.jpg http://www.mspcomparison.com/ 22-214 http://www.mspcomparison.com/component/content/article/908-rmm/22-level-platforms.html Not sure where all of the positive comments come from, but I have found both the agentless and agent managed workplace offerings to be abysmal. Real poor at generating useful alerts and full of false alerts. After working with Zenith, Kaseya and Labtech, I can honestly say that this is not in the same league as thos products both in terms of reliability or functionality. ]]> Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:24:57 +0000 22-209 http://www.mspcomparison.com/component/content/article/908-rmm/22-level-platforms.html We were with Level Platforms for almost 5 years after being with N-able in the early days. We were quite patient with LP over the years, recognizing that that the industry was still in its infancy but the amount of time we spent just maintaining the LP System Centre was so enormous that it ate so much into any return we would have hoped to make from our clients. We had many repeated real world situations where client machines would go down or run out of disk space etc. without ANY alert being generated from the Level Platforms system. There was always an excuse for why the system didn't perform as expected but I think that for the cost we should get a service that just works. We lost the confidence of our clients in the system so much so that we had to change the way we offered our Managed Service. The industry is maturing and you would be better served finding a partner that has a better product that is more competitively priced. ]]> Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:36:47 +0000 22-200 http://www.mspcomparison.com/component/content/article/908-rmm/22-level-platforms.html We have benn using LPI for about 5 years. We are very pleased with the product. Support has been excellent and the product just keeps getting better with each release. LPI helps us support our Clients better and has a postive effect on our bottom line. We have looked at all the other RMMs and find no reason to switch. Overall, LPI beats them all. ]]> Wed, 23 Nov 2011 22:13:08 +0000 22-176 http://www.mspcomparison.com/component/content/article/908-rmm/22-level-platforms.html I believe we took our first look at Level Platforms Managed Workplace back in 2005 (version 2, maybe 3). Alerting was minimal and not many policy modules (called templates back then). Creating custom policies was pretty daunting. There was much to like, but much that confused us so we passed at that time. One year later we made the decision to take another look at the product and were delighted with the improvements in Managed Workplace in just one year. We partnered with LPI and haven’t looked back since. And no reason to look elsewhere. Back in the mid 80’s I sold an $8,000 software package to manufacturing companies that ran on a $100 Atari computer. It was the graphics of the Atari that we needed for charting. Given we were taking a gaming computer into the business world we knew the only way to succeed was through an extreme commitment to software product development, quality and support. The only company that I have seen in the ensuing years that could even come close to the overall commitment we had, has been Level Platforms. From the newest staff member right on through to the top level execs, Peter Sandiford continues to assemble an exceptional team that shares his every vision and commitment to insuring that Managed Workplace remains the best RMM tool available today… and for tomorrow. With every new release, major or minor, the new features and functionality continues to amaze us. LPI has always listened to user requests “and complaints”, and improved the product significantly every time. There have been some bumps and frustrations over the years as there is with any product as sophisticated as Managed Workplace, but by and large from each new release would emerge the most solid, stable and feature rich RMM platform available. The agent-less architecture in the beginning is what sold us with Managed Workplace and with the new 2011 Device Manager agent we can monitor servers in remote locations just as though they were sitting in the main office. Our ability to support offsite Laptops changed significantly with the Device Manager and we now have an unbelievable level of monitoring and management for laptops that rarely ever show up on the corporate network. Windows patches… ho hum. A couple of clicks and presto the entire fleet is patched. Tired of those almost daily Adobe and Java critical updates. Third party patching introduced in 2011 has made this task effortless and completely automated. The scripting engine is awesome! There is not much you can’t do with the new scripting engine. LPI even automates the process of updating itself as new versions are released. Help desk access right to the desktop is available through a variety of included and available third party products. There is also an option to access workstations behind the user’s desktop, without interrupting the productivity of the user. If ever you needed to collaborate or bounce an idea off a peer, the partner forum is the place to go. Unparalled participation is what you receive. The sharing of ideas, processes, procedures, and custom policies is unlike any other forum I’ve encountered. Postings are answered almost immediately and normally by several peers as well as LPI moderators. A true partner community. If you want to razzle-dazzle a prospective client with the results of your free network assessment just print out the hardware and software asset detail reports (two sided of course) and hand it to your prospect. Caution, you should purchase stock in a paper company before printing the reports. Toss in Server Health and Patch Status reports and new prospects as well as established clients will be overwhelmed with how deep your view is into their network. The breadth of information collected about every device on the network will overwhelm even your most challenging prospect. For those times when we encounter a unusual problem and need to contact tech support, well what can I say that the others haven’t already said. They really are the best in the business. The only bad experiences I’ve had with Level support is when I embarrass myself by doing something stupid and they have to bail me out. Yes, there were a few things over the years that was their fault, but support calls were answered quickly by a knowledgeable tech and remediation was swift. My partnership with Level Platforms has always been nothing short of spectacular at every level. The partnership is real. The commitment to excellence is real. It begins with the Managed Workplace product and continues through development, support, marketing assistance, ongoing training, partner forums, user conference, road shows, and our very own dedicated partner development manager. A partnership with Level Platforms is designed to insure that every LPI partner succeeds. ]]> Tue, 02 Aug 2011 18:50:43 +0100 22-164 http://www.mspcomparison.com/component/content/article/908-rmm/22-level-platforms.html We have been a Managed Workplace user for about 3 years. We have seen highs and lows in this industry. We have used many of the other software and solution packages out there. We have home grown our own solutions. At the end of the day, we are using Managed Workplace from Level Platforms. The latest version out has so many bells and whistles that just blow the socks of of everything else out there. MW2011 R2 is due out within a month or so and the new feature sets, streamlining and capabilities are going to make us more efficient, which in turn makes us more money. The recent addition of the Automation and enhanced Scripting engines have brought Managed Workplace to a whole new level. We are able to automate and script things in minutes what would have taken hours or days previously. Some of our engineers have come from large enterprise environments and when they have had to interact with the LPI Support Team their jaws have hit the floor in amazement because their techs are so good. So many times with other vendors we have seen less than stellar performance from tech support people -- it's been the norm to know more about their product than the techs. This has never been the case at LPI and we have always been able to get an issue resolved in an expedient fashion. Any and all speedbumps we have ever experienced have been addressed and remediated - most of the time being brought to the attention of developers in order to add a new enhancement or feature that others would benefit from. The staff at Level Platforms listens and is committed to having the best Managed Services Platform RMM tool out there. I have the utmost respect for the team over there and look forward to continuing down this road with them! James Laszko Mythos Technology Inc CTO www.mythostech.com ]]> Mon, 18 Jul 2011 23:33:42 +0100 22-158 http://www.mspcomparison.com/component/content/article/908-rmm/22-level-platforms.html We have been an LPI partner for 5 years and could not be happier with the evolution of Managed Workplace as our RMM tool of choice. We partnered with Level Platforms because we wanted a solution that was agent-less, as our MSP offering evolved over the past few years the ability to support the roaming users became a task. Thankfully the 2011 product now includes a device manager to address this challenge to support users anywhere in our offering. Our partner development manager and support team have always been readily available to help us out when needed. Looking forward to seeing the next batch of enhancements scheduled in the R2 release. ]]> Wed, 06 Jul 2011 19:25:12 +0100 22-151 http://www.mspcomparison.com/component/content/article/908-rmm/22-level-platforms.html We've been a Level Platforms partner for a number of years. We've been in business for 19 years working with SMB clients, and have been providing managed services for the past 7 years. Several years ago, as the Managed Services industry was in its early stages, LPI (along with every other managed service vendor) was going through some rough patches. We looked at just about every other vendor out there, and decided to stick with LPI due to the people there and in particular the vision and commitment of founder Peter Sandiford. We believed that LPI gave us the best chance of succeeding in the managed services arena. Their entire team is outstanding. We made the right decision. About 5 years ago, the LPI platform became rock solid. Subsequent releases have introduced additional features and improved functionality. With the 2011 release, they haven't just hit a home run, it's a grand slam. I agree with everything that Matthew says in his review and he's pretty much covered everything I'd say. The network audit package is awesome! In the past, doing a network review for a new prospective client was a painstaking process. Since the LPI product is agentless, it allows us to perform a network review with minimal effort. We have an inexpensive laptop with the LPI Onsite Manager installed. We simply put that on the client's network, configure network discovery, and leave it onsite for a few days. The Network Audit reports that we can then run are extremely impressive. We haven't failed to land a client yet when doing this. It's priceless. One additional thing I'll add it that in addition to the stellar LPI support team, the partner community and forums on the LPI website are second to none. Some incredible partners on there contributing assistance on a regular basis. In my opinion, LPI is no doubt the leader in the managed services market, and things will only get better. Highly recommended. ]]> Thu, 26 May 2011 13:12:37 +0100 22-138 http://www.mspcomparison.com/component/content/article/908-rmm/22-level-platforms.html Level Platforms Managed Workplace 2011 is just awesome. I agree with Todd and STF's comments below. I have the advantage of using the current product in production for 3 months now and I can tell you it has gotten better. We have been around 7 years and and an MSP for two. In that time we burned through HoundDog, GFI Max, and Zenith for RMM Tools. When we found LPI 2010 we thought things were good. Then they came out with Managed Workplace 2011. 2011 is everything we need in an RMM tool. It does all the stuff you'd require in an RMM: pull software inventory, pull hardware inventory, Windows event log alerting, excellent SNMP alerting, great reporting, and PSA integration. The 2011 version of LPI Managed Workplace combines the agent-less model of network scanning with an agent to give you the best of both worlds. You can now choose how you want to monitor. We prefer to use the classic agent-less scanning for the network and agents on portable computers and non-domain workstations. All of this information comes back to us and an Autotask ticket is created as needed. We love the pricing and ease of setup. Rather than buy $20k worth of agents and hope we can use them LPI charges us by site. I can monitor a 15 device site for $29 and larger sites for a few bucks more. When a new device is added it costs me nothing - I just drop a pre-configured Policy Module onto the device and I am done. In less than 1 minute I can be monitoring and alerting on a Small Business Server! My bill only goes up only when I add a new site. They allow you to install for free for a couple months on a prospect to try and get the business. They also give you a free license to monitor your own equipment. Policy Modules for every OS and most hardware are included in the box - if one is missing you can easily write your own or LPI will make it for you. I did ding them a little bit on rating the ease of setup as Zenith and GFI Max being SAAS are easier in initial setup. We use the on-premise server version of LPI, but LPI does offer a hosted version. We found with Zenith, though, that after setup it was cumbersome and time consuming to much more than basic alerting and monitoring. LPI is much, much easier to configure and customize. Updates are awesome. Updating your server is as simple as running the updated software and agents are updated via click on your Service Center console. Support is stellar. They have always been very helpful, knowledgeable, and wonderful to deal with. Support is North American based and is available via e-mail or telephone. There is also a Partner forum. When I call in my call has always been answered by a support person within 60 seconds. The President hands out his cell number and says to call if you ever have an issue with his people - how can you beat that? Interface: The interface is beautiful and very functional. Scripting: much improved. It is very easy to write scripts or use one of the 100s in the box. You can always check the status of scheduled scripts to make sure they ran. Patch Management: It just works. We only have to approve patches once to patch all clients. With 2011 3rd party patching is included in the box. Reporting: Reporting is the best I have ever seen. The reports are beautiful and cover everything from executive health reports, to hardware inventory, server status, and software inventories. Every Monday morning at 5 am my clients get an e-mail with their Weekly Executive Health report in PDF format. Monthly they get the server reports and quarterly their asset reports - set it and forget it. If you need more reports you can write them yourself or have LPI do it. Network Audit Reports Not only is LPI trying to help you with your existing clients they want to help you get more. Their Partner Development Managers are constantly trying to help you with your business. One thing they released recently are the Network Audit Reports. Patterned after Robin Robins 27 point Problem Prevention Network Audit (and announced at her 2011 Boot Camp) the Network Audit Reports allow you to drop a device on-site and get a complete network audit done in minutes! The reports are very nice and branded with your logo. They have saved us a lot of time and money. Overall, we are very pleased with LPI Managed Workplace 2011. ]]> Wed, 11 May 2011 22:10:21 +0100 22-125 http://www.mspcomparison.com/component/content/article/908-rmm/22-level-platforms.html I am a LPI user since 2007 and the program has come a long way over the past several years. It has always been great at tracking and reporting information and it is very customizable, enabling you to build alerts for just about anything. The support has always been stellar too. I am very excited about the new functionality in LPI 2011, in my mind; it really boosts the products value and capability to a whole new level. I have been playing with 2011 as it has been in development and there are some major new features that really will save time and can eliminate your dependency on other tools. Let me give you some for-examples: 1) Remote control in less than three clicks: The new LPI interface enables you to remote into a desktop via a pop out menu from the central devices screen in just a few clicks. This is super easy to use and really is a nice enhancement to the existing remote control functionality of lpi. 2) Flexibility between Agent or Agent less: One of LPI's main selling points for years has been the fact that you did not need an agent installed on all devices in order to collect information or interact with the machine. This was wonderful provided that everything was connected and inside a traditional network, but with the increased dependence on remote users and laptops, the option to have an agent has become increasingly effective. This is now available with LPI 2011, and the agent install is simple, quick and not recourse intensive. The option to use an agent less onsite manager, or an agent based Device Manager is very powerful and really completes the solution. 3) Detailed device information: In if we had a customer who wanted to order a ram upgrade, we could use LPI to rapidly remote into the machine and pull information, but now with LPI 2011, you can just bring up the device view and right on the screen is very rich information about system components. This will also be a huge time saver! Over all, I am very impressed with LPI 2011! ]]> Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:45:22 +0000 22-124 http://www.mspcomparison.com/component/content/article/908-rmm/22-level-platforms.html Level Platforms is taking out all the stops in 2011. Competition from other RMM providers has really pushed LPI to take their product to another level. The hybrid model of Agent vs Agentless will give us the ultimate flexibility in our offering for 2011. Being able to harness the new automation framework has our gears really turning also. There are well over 100+ Scripts included right off the bat. I see us starting to migrate away group policy and moving towards policy management via the MW framework. We manage about 150 servers and 600 workstations so we rely on LPI to be the eyes and ears into our customers networks. I have never been more confident that we have made the best choice possible for our RMM solution and look forward to everything that will come in 2011. We have insight into the roadmap for 2011 and believe me when I tell you that LPI will be the best in class RMM tool come 2012. ]]> Sun, 23 Jan 2011 15:37:32 +0000