Paglo makes it easy, and free, for small and midsize businesses to track the devices on their network
It's 9 a.m. Monday. Do you know the status of your network? How many users are logged in? How much memory is being used? How many iPhones are in use on the network? Are the latest Microsoft security patches active?
Those questions and a host of others can be answered by Paglo, a new IT search engine developed by Paglo Labs that is designed for use in IT networks with 50 and more users -- or enough connected devices to make it impossible for a single administrator to keep track of them all.
The company bills its product as "the world's first search engine for IT," and Paglo founders, CEO Brian de Haaff and CTO Chris Waters, have been signing up beta users -- more than 3,500 so far. Because Paglo is easy to install and use, their search engine is particularly useful for small and midsize companies with tight budgets. The search engine is powered by the Paglo Crawler, which collects any given network's information about its computers and users and then sends it to the Paglo Search Index.
"We complement any systems that you already have in place," says de Haaff. "Paglo gives you the ability to proactively answer questions about computers, networks, and users before something catches on fire. It can be used as a network management tool. It also can be used as an operations, security, or audit tool as well. But at the core of Paglo, we discover information, index it, and give you the ability to search it."
Complex Technology Has a History
While Paglo's emergence in the search engine market feels sudden, a search engine tool powered by technology this complex and ambitious doesn't happen overnight.
de Haaff is the first to admit that it didn't. Paglo's core technology, he notes, was carved out of his previous firm, Network Chemistry, which was acquired last summer by Aruba Networks. Network Chemistry was focused primarily on security and, while security is still an important feature of Paglo, the search engine has been expanded to cover other important network functions.
For instance, Paglo has important community overtones because users can pick and choose many applications and features in use by the Paglo community and use them for their individual networks.
The community-sharing aspect of Paglo can be especially useful for small and midsize businesses, which can use each other's applications, although the security features of the search engine ensure that there is no data mingling among users. "Users in the community can save their searches and share them when they want with all other users in the Paglo community," said de Haaff.
"We believe strongly in what we call the 'open enterprise,' " added de Haaff. "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. There are thousands of different networks and devices out there that businesses would like to discover and index. By making the Paglo 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."
Next Page: Getting Started: It's Easy and Free
