Panorama9 ($1.50 per user per month; free available) is a cloud-based IT management platform that offers administrators real-time tracking on company assets, availability, security vulnerabilities, and compliance. All the information from all the computers in the organization is automatically gathered and rolled up in a high-level overview. Administrators can easily drill down to find the precise issue and the actual machine.

Panorama9 offers small to mid-sized companies a way to manage a long list of IT tasks through a single "pane of glass," using the Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. The system also recently added patch management capabilities, in which the monitoring server tracks what software and operating system each computer on the network is running, and updates older software to the latest versions. Similar tools include Spiceworks (free), Nagios (open source) and GFI Max.

Unfortunately, Panorama9 is currently only available for Windows machines. The company is currently working on an agent for Macs. This review looks at version 2.6.9.

Panorama9 is different from most monitoring applications in that it doesn't require agents to be installed on to every single machine. This can be a logistical nightmare for administrators to manage, and some systems can't have other software installed—even if it is a management tool. Instead, Panorama9 takes advantage of Microsoft's Active Directory to communicate with all other computers on the domain. The agent software is installed on only one computer, which acts as a centralized server, and that machine gathers information from others on the network before pushing it up to the cloud platform.

Features
With Panorama9, administrators can gain remote control of machines, create network maps, monitor all the systems in a network, receive text or email notifications when something goes wrong, generate reports reflecting network status, manage users, keep track of licenses being used within the organization, patch management, and track hardware assets. Thanks to the easy-to-use IT dashboard, administrators are able to see security threats or vulnerabilities, system availability, track compliance policies, and gain a complete asset management overview.

The features available vary by the type of subscription plan the customer selects. The free version has limited features, supporting vulnerability and availability monitoring and compliance and asset management. Only one user is available for the free version. The "Small" plan ($0.89 per device per month) supports three users and has all the capabilities in the free version as well as the ability to monitor three Websites. The "Regular" plan ($1.50 per device per month) supports unlimited number of users, same capabilities as the free version, unlimited number of Websites, a network map to see all the monitored devices, the ability to generate reports and receive email and SMS notifications. The "Enterprise" version ($2.25 per device per month) has everything the regular version offers, as well as patch management capabilities.

Agent 1-2-3
When a customer signs up for Panorama9, a confirmation email containing a download link for the agent software and login credentials for the dashboard is sent to the customer Inbox. The email lays out the installation process in a 1-2-3 list and has a few helpful hints. There's also a link to a video that explains how the agent works.

The server on which Panorama9 would be installed requires .NET Framework version 3.5. When the install wizard started, I checked off the "enable deployment" option and entered the username and password for an administrator account on a Microsoft Active Directory domain. After installation, the agent uses the credentials to gather information from the other computers on the domain.

The information is asked in the wizard because it's stored only on this central computer. Panorama9's cloud servers never see this information, which should reassure security administrators.

As programs go, Panorama9 is quite low-impact, with no icons or folders on the system. It installed two services, one to perform the actual monitoring, and another that updates the agent when a newer version is available.

Getting Started With the Cloud
Once the agent was installed, I logged into the Web-based dashboard from the same machine. The helpful confirmation email advised me to wait ten minutes before logging in to give the agent time to send data about the server as well as others in the network. That ten minute interval may just be applicable to large networks. When I checked the dashboard five minutes later, data from all four machines were already on the system.

I didn't have to enable deployment on the central server to automatically gather data from other machines. I could follow a more manual process by logging into the dashboard and downloading the agent individually on each machine. This is tedious, and also took much longer for the data to be transferred to the dashboard. While this lets me add machines on other subnets and different domains to the same dashboard, I far preferred letting the serverdo the bulk of the work.

The IT Dashboard
The "dashboard" view on the Web interface has three panels monitoring for vulnerabilities, availability, and compliance. Another panel keeps track of assets, overall status, and "news" from Panorama9. The monitoring panels are continuously updated, displaying charts in real-time to give administrators a to-the-second view of what is happening on their network. The "assets" panel on the dashboard view does not refresh automatically.

There are a few areas throughout the interface that require a manual refresh, either by forcing the browser, or by clicking into a different section and then coming back. When I was downloading agents manually, I had to click away to a different section of the interface and come back before I saw the asset count update the information. It isn't readily apparent which parts of the site update automatically, which made things a little confusing.

Managing Assets
I was able to see all the machines being tracked by Panorama9 by going to the "assets" view on the interface. The name of the machine, the hardware model, manufacturer, installed operating system, domain, and hardware type are listed. I was pleased to see that the platform correctly identified two machines on my network as virtual machines. From here, I could click on a machine name and get detailed information for that machine, such as CPU and memory usage, vulnerabilities (such as outdated software), and any policy violations. I could also view detailed hardware information, such as the computer's serial number, what kind of video card I had installed, and MAC and IP address information.

Managing Issues
The software categorizes issues as vulnerabilities in software (patches), availability (up/down time) and compliance. I could see at a glance which machines didn't have updates or patches installed. I found it nifty that it could tell me how many problems existed on 75 percent of devices being monitored, and the percentage of critical issues versus non-critical.

I could turn on patch management and allow Panorama9 to update Microsoft Office, the Windows operating system, Oracle Java, Adobe Flash, Mozilla Firefox, and other popular third-party applications. I could also specify which machines should not be updated using the patch management process, or which application should not be updated.

The availability tab listed any services that weren't running, if server capacity was critically high, whether a server was down or not, and other networking concerns. For compliance, I could select a few pre-made policies, I could also monitor when potentially harmful applications are installed, when peer-to-peer (P2P) software is found on the system, if the logon password is weak, and if software licenses are missing. I could also monitor if removable storage devices are ever attached.

One disappointment: the policies were not customizable. There doesn't seem to be a way to create more complex policies or to define new requirements. In fact, this entire screen felt overly simplistic. Panorama9 had a list of rules, such as removable storage devices, strong logon passwords, and installing p2p applications. All I could do was turn the rules on or off. If they were on, then Panorama9 would alert me when a machine violated the rule. There didn't seem to be a way to add any new rules.

Granted, the existing ones should cover most situations faced by small and medium-sized businesses, but I think many system administrators would appreciate the chance to add more rules. There was no way to list specific applications that could not be installed, for example. I couldn't change the rule that specified that critical vulnerabilities should be fixed within seven days. What if I wanted to make it three days? I was out of luck. Or if I wanted to know what was included in the "potential harmful applications" list. This limitation exists in the vulnerability and availability assessments, but it feels even more restrictive when determining compliance policies. I could create alerts to notify me when any of these items occurred, instead of waiting for me to login to the dashboard.

Cloud-Based IT
Panorama9 takes on the time-consuming task of collecting information and organizes them in an amazingly intuitive interface for the IT manager. Even if it's only one person managing the entire business IT infrastructure, the platform makes it simple to see at a glance what is wrong, and to get up-to-date detailed information about the machines. Need to know the IP address? Not a problem. It's just a few clicks away. Need to know which machines haven't been updated with the latest Adobe Flash? Check the vulnerabilities panel, and it's right there.

The reports make it easy to take this information out of the dashboard and to also view historical data. Administrators can easily drill down to find the precise issue and the actual machine at all times. I rate Panorama9 highly, but it falls shy of Editors' Choice because of the limited policy engine. A little bit more customizability for advanced administrators would have been enough to push it over the top.

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