Pulseway has released version 9.8 of its RMM solution. This release focuses on improving the automation engine; however, there are also some other significant updates. For example, the Remote Control Session Recording feature announced in 9.7 is now generally available.
Other major improvements include updates to device management, improvements to the Workflow engine and enhanced integrations to PSA solutions. Enterprise Times spoke to Edgar Zacharjev, SVP of Product and Strategy, about the update.
Zacharjev revealed that the main improvements in Remote Control Session Recording are around performance. Pulseway wanted to approach this cautiously to measure the impact of storing compressed video files on devices. He also expects that the iOS version of the Remote Control session recording will be GA later in the year.
Below are some but not all of the updates in this release. Pulseway has done considerable work on the APIs it offers, among other things.
I asked Zacharjev what excited him most about this update. He replied, “Recording, we keep doing more to the remote control. We’ve added more relay servers. We use a relay service for its performance. We added a ton on that infrastructure across all regions, and I’m excited about the general performance improvements.“
Improvements to Workflows
One of the strengths of the Pulseway RMM solution is its Workflow Automation capabilities. With this release, Pulseway has introduced the ability to nest workflows within one another. This will enable customers, partners and Pulseway themselves to introduce far more complexity to automations without needing to create massive complex single workflow automations.
While chaining workflows was already possible, this gives the solution, along with decision gates, greater control over any processes.
In addition, it is now possible to import and export workflows. This opens up the capability for customers, partners and Pulseway to create shared and potentially monetised pre-defined workflows that customers can access or purchase and install as .flw files,
Zacharjev also revealed that Pulseway is launching a workflow-sharing community at its Nexus event this week. He added, “That’s exciting to me. There are also another 20-odd pre-built workflows that our automation team built based on use cases that are in there. So workflows within workflows, and then import, export. We’re trying to push the utilization of automation and get more adoption of it. I’m tired of people saying I’m too busy to automate things.”
I asked him about the commercialisation of pre-built workflows. He replied that it would “be free. Okay, if some businesses can build and sell packages of it, we’re not asking for any cut. If people want to monetize this, and they put in the work to create 100 workflows as a package that somebody wants to buy on the side, we’re not going to stop that.
“We’re just opening up the gates, basically. Everyone can get involved and create adoption. Workflows are awesome. The way we build it is different from typical automation. It’s not linear. Now, there are workflows within workflows, and they can go all sorts of directions, but you saw how we build it out internally. Some of our clients have done that. It’s phenomenal stuff.“
The ability to export and import workflows will also be useful for organisations with multiple tenants. Zacharjev cited some multinational clients, for example, having instances for each country.
Device Management
Pulseway has also made incremental improvements to device management by adding new data points. They include
- Device uptime
- Last logged-in User (Windows +MacOS
- Last Bootup (Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD)
- Serial Number for Windows and macOS agent devices
- MAC Address (Windows and macOS agent devices)
Where not available, Pulseway is working on adding data points for Linux and BSD.
PSA Integrations
The integration with PSA ticketing has been enhanced by associating the ticket with the contact who created it from within the Agent Tray.
Data fields such as First name, last name, email, phone and priority will populate in the PSA ticket. Pulseway has built integrations for Pulseway PSA, Autotask, and ConnectWise.
What does the future hold
For Workflows, Zacharjev said, “More conditions, more triggers, more packages. I’ve hired another five or six people just to build workflows. We keep releasing those monthly but it won’t even have to be on the release side of things. We’ll keep releasing new packs weekly or bi-weekly.”
Zacharjev also revealed that the long-awaited Mobile Device Management has been pushed back to the end of the month. It will contain self-service, self-provisioning, whitelisting, and black policies.
The most thing that excites him is the pricing: 50 cents per mobile device. He believes that competitors are charging between six and eight times for what they offer. Considering it will also mean supplier consolidation for many customers, Pulseway is hoping to clean up.
Looking further ahead, into next year, at least Zacharjev revealed, “Big-ticket items that we’re announcing that are in progress include root cause analysis through the digestion of information. If an issue or notification comes in, we’re going to relay information within that specific interval, what else was happening with the infrastructure in that time frame.
“For example, a service issue we’re going to compile, what else was happening on the server, what was the user doing, or what was happening with the infrastructure in that two minutes so that you can get your resolution a lot quicker.
“Also, next year, integrations, workflows, new backup, and then scalability and performance, to make the tool work even better than it does.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Sometimes, updates appear to have nothing major in them. While the improvements from Pulseway in this release seem small, it is, after all, not long after 9.7 was released, the impact could be huge.
The ability to nest workflows and export and import them could create a whole ecosystem for Pulseway. If a partner or client can get it right, the potential for automation is huge. Beyond that, the MDM solution, when released, could provide a huge boost for Pulseway as it targets an adjacent market.
It will be very interesting to see how the other MDM vendors react to the pricing announcement.
