One of the energizing characteristics of the IT industry in general, and the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market in particular, is the continuous change. Part of the change process is the constant cycle of new companies entering the market and established companies disappearing.

Although many of these companies will come and go with little fanfare, occasionally the meaning of a promising young company that fails to succeed is worth extra consideration. Klir Technologies was such a company.

I was notified of the company’s closure by its CEO/Co-Founder, James Maiocco, at the time of its announcement on August 1, but have been unable to comment on this event until now because of other commitments.

Klir sought to solve companies’ IT performance management needs via a SaaS solution. While Klir had been in business since 2000, it started to attract serious attention in 2006 when it decided … Read More »

This week’s NetworkWorld includes an article about SpiceWorks’ new, free, desktop management solution. The on-demand service enables IT professionals to manage up to 250 devices. The company claims the free solution includes discover, inventory, monitoring, tracking, reporting and remote hardware and software problem resolution capabilities.

Giving away free IT/network management solutions isn’t a new idea. This is the same thing a company called VitalSigns did in the application performance management space a decade ago to penetrate the market before the company I was a part of, International Network Services (INS), acquired it to enhance our network performance management service called EnterprisePRO.

More recently, Klir Technologies has been using this same strategy to penetrate the market with its on-demand network performance management solution.

The broader trend is that IT professionals are becoming increasingly receptive to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and managed service ‘out-tasking’ alternatives to traditional … Read More »