An Intensive Study on Remote Monitoring & Management (RMM)

Want to know how RMM software works and benefits your business? Keep rolling down to learn all.

What is RMM Software? (Remote Monitoring & Management) RMM is high-end software used to collectively take care of remote monitoring and management of your network system. As a process, it could better be described as the constant job of supervising and controlling IT infrastructure including network devices, desktops, servers, and mobile devices through locally installed agents that can further be accessed & controlled by a management service provider. RMM software is originated to primarily help MSP’s for better, proactive and remote monitoring & Management of their client’s network.

Working Mechanism of RMM Software?

The RMM software works in a very simple way; software often called an “Agent” is installed at the client’s endpoint devices like a computer, a mobile, workstations, server, and alike.

How do these agents work?

• The principal duty of these agents is to provide the entire health report of the machine and working status back to the MSP.
• This allows MSP to have real-time insight into the client’s network and enables the MSP to keep machines maintained and up-to-date.
• Additionally, MSP can proactively monitor and manage the issues before they come into the picture as a big crisis and resolve them remotely – without even moving an inch from his location.

What is the ticket system in RMM?

Whenever an agent detects any issues with the system or network (any endpoint on which it has been installed) it creates an “alert” or “ticket” and sends it to the MSP, to make MSP aware of the problem detected. This helps MSP to decide on how to move further to fix the issues. The ticketing system is smart enough to categorize the problems on their severity basis. The cherry on the cake is; because of this ticketing system, MSP could fix most of the issues before the client even gets to know about it.

What are the main functions of the RMM software?

Being an MSP you should be having a clear idea about what you can expect after you deploy RMM software i.e. what is its functionality, the following list will give you more detail on this:

1. Collecting complete information about client software, hardware, networks, and computing system.
2. Supplying the activity reports and data charts to the MSP.
3. Constant monitoring of the network & computing systems.
4. Track device health & detecting any error before it arises.
5. Creating & sending alerts/tickets to the MSP.
6. Monitor & managing multiple endpoints belonging to multiple clients simultaneously.
7. Performing Automate pre-scheduled maintenance jobs.
8. Provides patch management, it covers almost all human errors.
9. Provides complete control over efficiency & performance of your client’s network.

The list doesn’t end here, deploying an RMM software could also provide many indirect benefits which we will explain in another article. RMM software enables technicians to fix issues sitting remotely without even visiting the client’s location.

The Emergence of RMM concept

“Necessity is the mother of invention” heard of it? Right? Everyone does actually. The same is the reason which developed the RMM software to help MSP for management & monitoring of their client’s network while sitting remotely. It was in the 1990s when first-ever standard network management tools were introduced and used openly. It is known as the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), which worked on the Break-Fix model of managing IT infrastructure of the Companies.

How The IT management team fix breakdowns before RMM

The IT management team use to visit the client’s location when some breakdown happens and fix the issue, they also visited the client’s location periodically to do complete health check-ups of the systems. But that was not sufficient, as most parts of this modal required manual work and physical efforts. And because the network was not monitored 24×7 breakdowns did happen and only after that everybody rushes to fix it. It involved huge time, efforts, and money. The SNMP was a quite a complex and costly system to manage IT structure of clients. Only huge organizations could afford to have SNMP services. It was in 2005 when even small and medium-sized companies could afford the managed IT services and it was because the RMM has made its foray into the IT services industry. To make it easier to understand why the Break-Fix modal didn’t survive long and what benefits MSP could get from RMM services, here we have tried to compile a comparison chart between these two.

How to choose best RMM service provider?

MSP must clearly know about the RMM service provider before hiring him for getting Managed IT services. An MSP seriously needs Managed IT services to keep the wheels turning, and to cater to all his end users. To ensure long-term uninterrupted services, growth potential and ensure promised service delivery, MSPs should consider the following:

• An RMM provider who offers a complete package of centralized leadership and business support including a promise to provide training & education to current staff.
• Make sure RMM software can handle diverse environments.
• RMM software compatible with virtualized and hybrid cloud infrastructures.
• Providing hybrid software having a single dashboard to operate and manage routine jobs.
• Having RMM software that is capable of handling the routine tasks, like patch management, antivirus definition updates on its own.
• An RMM services provider backed by a strong network operations center (NOC) being operated by strong technical staff.