Remote Monitoring & Management: How Level Is Different from the Competition

Remote monitoring and management (RMM) software helps IT teams to gain insights into the company's devices. However, underneath the hood, building an RMM solution involves expertise in many distinct technologies - video sharing, multiple operating system support, scripting across multiple devices, anti-malware & virus scanning.

At Level, we pride ourselves on having built one of the most intuitive, secure, and performant RMM solutions on the market. Moreover, we've made Level far more flexible than our RMM competitors' solutions. In this article, we'll do a deep dive on what sets Level apart from the competition in the remote monitoring and management space.

Built on a New Security Model: You Control Your Data

In the early days, we made the decision to build our RMM software around a different model than everyone else. Whereas our competitors were about centralizing control over client data, Level was founded on the idea that client data belongs with the client.

Instead, we chose to make our connections peer-to-peer and encrypted. We ensured that customer data would never touch our servers unless it absolutely had to. The upshot for the customer is you can manage your devices in a trustless way. We are unique in the space for our use of emerging peer-to-peer technologies. As a result, Level will always be a security asset and never a liability or attack vector for accessing your information.

Since your devices have a direct connection to one another, Level is more secure, lower latency, and less obtrusive than all other RMM solutions. We believe strongly in decentralization and peer-to-peer technology. It's the future of data privacy and work as we know it.

Cross-Platform: Mac & Linux are First-Class Citizens

During interviews with RMM users, we heard time and again about the difficulties of managing Apple devices or Linux servers. We know these devices are incredibly popular, especially for creative companies. However, our competitors are interested in only supporting Windows with a full suite of features. Too often, Mac and Linux are treated as second-class operating systems.

At Level, you can be sure we'll always support and roll out features for Mac and Linux, along with Windows. We're committed to supporting all types of devices natively so that Mac and Linux users can get the same benefits from their RMM software.

No Software to Install: Manage & Monitor from the Browser

Old-school RMM was built around the idea that an IT technician would install the RMM manager software on their corporate desktop workstation. However, the days of static IT teams working from individual desktops are over.

Modern IT teams use multiple devices, work from home, and even manage from their mobile devices on the go. This is impossible using the competition, but Level works entirely in the browser. Operating like other modern cloud software, Level brings RMM into the 21st century with access whenever and wherever you are.

Operating in the browser gives Level other benefits as well. We can release new versions of the management console regularly without needing customers to download and install updates. When we introduce new or improve existing features, you'll always have the latest, most up-to-date version of Level to manage your devices.

Low Latency, Real-Time Metrics & Alerts

One of the biggest complaints we've heard from users of existing RMM solutions is that data is inexplicably out of date or outright wrong. Stale data can easily make it into dashboards and device portals where it seldom gets invalidated and refreshed. This makes the job of IT management even harder, when you can't feel certain that the data you're looking at is accurate!

Once again, Level's peer-to-peer technology offers benefits. In this case, devices connect directly, offering us a lower-latency channel for exchanging device information in real time. When a device can't connect or is offline, Level knows about it immediately and can update the dashboards and device portals to match.

Level's metrics and alerts are data you can trust. Showing correct device information is a top priority for us as we develop Level so that our customers can feel secure knowing their data is accurate and timely.

Scripting & Scheduled Tasks with Clear Status Reports

One of the most important functions of RMM software is the ability to run scheduled tasks or scripts across all your devices simultaneously. It might be a security patch, adding a piece of software, or checking the value of a given configuration variable on the machine. Whatever the reason, scripting plays a huge role in IT management and making sure devices are up to date and secure.

Unbelievably, many RMM solutions in the space are bad at running scripts across devices. They either outright fail or have restrictions on the types of scripts you can run. Moreover, once the script does run, many solutions offer no insights into the status of scripts running on devices or governance over changes those scripts made.

When you run a scheduled task or script, you want to be sure that it ran for every device. With Level, you'll always know the status of your scripts across all machines or even on individual devices.

Get stack traces of script failures, changelog messages when a script completes, and insights into offline devices where the script was not able to run. Such support is a baseline ability for modern device management, and one Level supports natively across all our customers.

Different from the RMM Competition: Level Takes a New Model

Several key, foundational decisions we've made at Level - peer-to-peer connections, management through the browser, event-driven metrics/alerts - have allowed us to create an RMM product that's entirely different from the competition.

Using Level, you can rest easy knowing you control your own data, device information is up-to-date, and your changes will take effect across all your devices regardless of operating system. We consider these to be foundational functionality in any RMM solution, but unfortunately our competition doesn't always reach this mark.

We consider them foundational, because it's only the beginning of what Level is building - a complete suite of device management that IT teams can use to seamlessly manage and support workers from anywhere to anywhere.

Want to learn more and try Level for yourself? Get in touch.

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