First Option Goes SaaS with iSeries Watchdog

December 1, 2009 Alex Woodie

First Option, a System i outsourcer-turned-software developer, is now selling access to its iSeries Watchdog systems monitoring software as a service over the Internet. Version 2.0 of the product, which was recently announced, also brings several new i OS monitoring capabilities requested by customers.

Massachusetts-based First Option debuted the iSeries Watchdog as a new business venture in spring 2008. The company, which makes most of its money by running System i and iSeries servers for its clients, decided to market and sell the entry-level server monitoring software it developed to monitor its customers’ environments.

The first release of the iSeries Watchdog featured a color coded GUI that displays key health indicators of a System i server. The software would automatically alert administrators if any problems cropped up, like jobs ending abnormally or backups that didn’t complete.

With the iSeries Watchdog version 2.0, released last week, First Option has included several new features requested by customers. The most important new feature is the capability to access the product remotely over the Internet, in software as a service (SaaS) mode. After a secure connection is established to a customer’s site, that customer will be able to view key health statistics on the GUI.

Version 2.0 also introduces several other new features, including the capability to monitor and report messages of specific jobs to defined user groups; the capability to respond to QSYSOPR messages via the GUI, the capability define the number of times to send alerts for QSYSOPR messages; and others.

iSeries Watchdog 2.0 is available now. For more information and free 14-day trial downloads, visit First Option’s Web site at www.1stoption.com.