One of my favorite SMB/SME IT operations and support management suites has made the leap to SaaS land: ManageEngine by Adventnet (better known in most circles for their Zoho SaaS platform) is now partly available as a service, at least in beta form.

Beginning with OpManager, the component which monitors servers and applications and generates statistical data and alerts, the company hopes to move a number of their ManageEngine components to the platform by the end of the year.

One of the advantages of ManageEngine has always been their web-based platform, so it seems like a fairly easy move to a service-based system. You have to wonder about the economics and scalability of the leap, however. Although AdventNet's licensing rates have always been famously low, the subscription service is lower yet: $5 per monitored node per month. Considering the amount of background traffic that this sort of monitoring requires, that has to make for some razor thin margins. It also has implications for users, who will be in the somewhat strange position of trying to monitor internal systems via external services. That's going to make troubleshooting Internet connection problems a bit difficult, I should think.

The beta, however, is free, and signing up couldn't be easier. Head on over to Opmanager.com and give it a spin.