N-able Technologies president and COO J.P. Jauvin.

Ottawa-based remote monitoring and management (RMM) vendor N-able has added two-way integration with professional services automation software and enhanced patch management and remote control with the launch of version 7.2 of its flagship N-central software.

Perhaps the most important new feature in the release, its last before 8.0 is slated to launch in April, is two-way integration with PSA giants Autotask and ConnectWise. In the past, the company had the ability to send tickets to PSA software, but new is the ability to send alerts from the PSA systems back to N-central and to close tickets in the PSA software from N-central, said Derik Belair, vice president of business developments and marketing at N-central.

“In the past, [RMM and PSA] tended to be more independent silos, but now they function as one integrated bi-directional system,” Belair said.

The R in RMM stands for “remote,” and 7.2 provides for faster remote access for MSPs with customers whose environments support UDP hole-punching by allowing MSPs to create direct peer-to-peer connections with remote devices. Previously, everything had to go through N-central in a “traffic cop” role, said J.P. Jauvin, president and COO of N-able. “The peer-to-peer architecture provides them with greater performance,” Jauvin said.

Also new in N-central 7.2 is an improved software management system that boasts better discovery of software assets in a customer’s organization as well as providing for instant access to software license keys. The company says these new tools will make it easier for MSPs to monitor their customers’ software positions, including reports on licensing compliance. A new patch management system rounds out the software features. Jauvin said that system automates patch approvals and “reduces the overhead” around making sure customers are running the latest patches.

The 8.0 launch may be just a couple of short months away, but Jauvin shied away from discussing too much about the next release, other than to say 8.0 will include advancements in terms of integration, support for virtualized devices, new user interface elements “and a few other surprises as well.”

The launch kicks off 2011 for the company, which “went to new heights in 2010,” Jauvin said, seeing exponential growth in terms of new managed services providers and therefore logically, the number of SMB customers those MSPs manage.

“The market is maturing in its adoption of managed services, and we’re seeing good reception for our freemium strategy and our 100 per cent coverage strategy,” Jauvin said.

The company will be offering a Webinar on the N-central 7.2 launch for partners in the Americas Thursday at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.