Barracuda Networks has shipped an MSP edition of its CloudGen Access solution and an updated release of its RMM application with a new name.
Going forward, Managed Workplace, the remote monitoring and management system Barracuda purchased in 2019, will be called Barracuda RMM. The new name better aligns with a changed IT landscape in which users are as likely to be doing their job from home as from an office, according to Brian Babineau, Barracuda’s senior vice president and general manager of MSP solutions.
“It has a connotation of everybody comes to work, everybody gets a corporate-issued laptop, everybody goes home,” says Babineau of the product’s former name. “That model has been flipped upside down over time, and that’s certainly been accelerated in the last 12 months.”
That same shift toward anywhere, anytime computing, he continues, explains the strategic importance of CloudGen Access in modern security strategies. Officially a “zero-trust network access” (ZTNA) solution, CloudGen Access is designed to let organizations secure any device on any site, including personally owned PCs on home networks. The system continuously monitors and observes users and lets administrators apply different policies to different resources under different conditions.
“Access can be granted and removed from the resource list depending on the time of the day, the day of the week, or the location of the user,” explains Sinan Eren, vice president of zero trust access at Barracuda. “That brings in the notion of context.”
Beyond context-specific policy setting, he adds, the product’s other differentiators include its swift performance and user-friendly interface, both of which promote adoption of the system. “Users actually like to have it on their endpoints,” Eren says.
CloudGen Access is based on technology Barracuda acquired last November when it bought security vendor Fyde. The new, MSP version of the solution provides multitenant management and per user, per month pricing, with an annual contract. Each seat covers an uncapped number of devices, resources, sites, and networks.
“There are no capacity or feature limitations,” Eren says.
Functionality updates in the latest Barracuda RMM release include enhanced integration with Intronis Backup, Barracuda’s BDR solution for MSPs. Before, according to Babineau, technicians could deploy Intronis agents but little more.
“Now you have full policy control, monitoring, and reporting on those backups,” he says. MSPs can now set up alerts from Barracuda RMM to monitor the progress of backup jobs and sync that data to their PSA as well.
Expanded patch management capabilities for cloud-based and on-premises Microsoft solutions let MSPs more fully and accurately keep those systems secure, he adds.
“It just broadens our ability to go through the whole Microsoft portfolio, track and see what versions you’re running, and if you’re on older versions make sure those are up to date,” Babineau says. That’s especially timely functionality now, he notes, in light of the recently disclosed and extremely dangerous breach of Microsoft Exchange Server deployments by Chinese hacking group Hafnium.
In addition, Barracuda RMM’s Central Dashboard now offers a refreshed UI designed to provide a fuller picture of a customer’s patch status, anti-virus posture, and more. “It’s all about presenting more information, especially from our security assessment solution,” Babineau says.
To make switching to the former Managed Workplace from competing platforms easier, Barracuda has introduced a fully outsourced, flat fee migration service. That offering comes in response to feedback from members of Barracuda’s partner advisory committee, many of whom were interested in becoming Barracuda RMM users but couldn’t spare the time or resources required to make that move, especially in the middle of a global pandemic.
“It’s a lot of work for them to do, and most of them weren’t willing to do it over the last 12
months, so we pulled together a service to make sure you could not only switch tools but migrate policies and patching and all of the other capabilities that you might’ve had beforehand,” Babineau says. “We can do the heavy lifting for the MSP so they can continue to run their business.”
Created by Level Platforms, Managed Workplace was one of the first RMM solutions specifically meant for MSPs. Ownership of the product shifted to security vendor AVG when that company bought Level Platforms in 2013, and to Avast in 2017 when it bought AVG. Avast’s commercial customer unit, Avast Business, sold the system to Barracuda two years later.
