FAQs about Paglo

We're here to help. We appreciate it when people ask questions about Paglo, so we've posted answers to those that we hear most often. Read about where the idea for Paglo came from, why we are unique, and what search means for IT.

What exactly do you do?
We are the leading on-demand IT management company. Some think of us as IT management SaaS, and InformationWeek recently recognized Paglo as one of the most disrutive technology companies and noted that with Paglo "search and SaaS unite for IT management." For the first time businesses can discover all their IT information and get instant answers to their computer, network, and security questions.

How did you get the idea for Paglo?
Customer feedback is what gave us the idea for Paglo. Paglo was founded after Brian de Haaff and Dr. Chris Waters led the sale of Network Chemistry's wireless security business to Aruba Networks (NASDAQ: ARUN). The company had also built technology that allowed companies to discover everything about the devices on their network, and customers continually requested the ability to search that info to solve computer, network, and security challenges. We have our customers to thank for leading us to deliver breakthrough search technology and the world's first complete on-demand IT management platform.

Why is search a good technology paradigm for IT issues?
Search is a great solution for any problem that requires ad hoc investigation. It is particularly good for IT because tons of heterogeneous data is created every day and lots of complex and hidden relationships exist between the computers, networks, and users. Paglo starts by automating the collection of all of the IT data and then provides search, analytics and applications on top of the platform.

What do you mean by "Universal Search" for IT?
Universal Search means that we allow you to collect all of the information about your computers, networks, and users with the Paglo Crawler. The captured data is then securely sent to the Paglo Search Index and is ultimately presented through your Paglo Web Account. This is important because we are not limited to one type of information, say logs or documents. We also are unique with patent-pending technology that presents query results as both simple text and rich quantitative data and specific appliations that you can use for things like inventory management and server and network monitoring.

How do you fit into my company's existing management system?
It's up to you. In many cases our customers are eliminating the point solutions that they have and using the saved maintenance fees to pay for Paglo. If that is not an option, we complement any systems that you already have in place. Paglo gives you the ability to proactively answer questions about computers, networks, and users before something catches on fire. Paglo is the starting place to resolve your IT problems.

Why are you offering the Paglo Crawler under open source?
We believe strongly in what we call the "open enterprise." It's a transparent way of doing business and a key component of it is that technology and expertise of significant value is provided at no cost and can be extended by the community that uses it. We also recognize that the Paglo Crawler runs on a business computer or server at the customer premises. Users like to understand what they are running, so by making the source code available they can understand exactly what the software does when it runs at their business. Finally, there are thousands of different networks and devices out there that businesses would like to discover and index. By making the Crawler open, anyone can easily write a plug-in to gather additional info. That info is then uploaded into the Paglo Search Index for searching and reporting.

What open source license do you use?
GNU GPL.

Aren't there other companies that do IT search? How are you different?
We are focused on IT professionals because they are ultimately the ones that will judge us. Competitors will come and go. With that said, we are fundamentally unique in the following ways:

We offer Universal IT Search (versus search for just one type of content)
We are truly a search engine in that we are on-demand
We're SaaS!

How do you know there is a market need for Paglo?
OVer 5,000 companies and consultants are managing everything IT with Paglo.

What's your business model?
We are an IT Management SaaS business and offer customers paid plans to manage everything IT. And because we are focused on delivering the most value, for the most users, as quickly as possible we offer a free account option for users to try Paglo and manage smaller IT environments.

Do you need to install Paglo on every computer on your network? If not, how can it index all of a computer's software installations without a peer or credentials?
The Paglo Crawler only needs to be installed on one computer. From there it will connect to other devices and computers over the LAN to collect their information. The Crawler needs credentials for these other devices (such as SNMP community strings, SSH logins or Windows domain credentials) so that it can login to them and get the information. The credentials that you enter are only used by the crawler and are not uploaded to, or stored in, the search index.

Does it work with Macs?
There are two versions of the Crawler. One for Windows and one for Linux. Paglo collects information from devices running different OSes, including Linux and Mac OS. It is worth noting that Paglo also provides an open API for submitting information to the search index, so it is possible to collect data from any source by having a script submit the data directly.

Can I host Paglo on my customers' Intranet and monitor it remotely from my server room?
Yes. Simply set up an account for each of your clients, download a Crawler and run one instance at each client, and then invite yourself to view the information. All of the companies will roll up into one account for you to manage. Paglo is multi-tenant. Note that although the Crawler runs at each client location, you view the data through our SaaS offering. This means no hardware or software for you to install at your location.

Companies trust you with their sensitive data and infrastructure?
Yes. Within Paglo.com, the information about each network is stored completely separately. Your data is not intermingled with anyone else's. The technology for securing online services is now widespread and well understood, and there are many examples that show they have great adoption (such as salesforce.com, NetSuite, gmail, TurboTax, etc.), but we realize that it might not be for everyone — yet.

What does the name Paglo mean?
Search is really about discovery, discovering new things and relationships that were previously hidden. That's what we help people do. We like to say that Paglo was a little known Italian explorer who brought the first sheep to New Zealand and is celebrated every year on Dandy Mutton Day, but the truth is that we made up the name.

For technical questions, see the Support FAQ.

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FAQs about Paglo