Remote Monitoring and Management solutions (RMMs) are present everywhere. You may not know it, but you most likely have an agent installed on your work machine, connecting to your company’s RMM. RMMs are used by IT professionals to perform a wide range of tasks without bothering the user or taking resources from them. RMMs also play an important role when setting up new endpoints or disabling access without having physical access to the machine or corporate network.

At Rhythmic, we use two different RMM solutions, one specific to Apple systems and another for Windows machines. They all look and work differently, but they share one final purpose: complete endpoint management. Autotask, Labtech, Kaseya VSA, NinjaRMM and Addigy are just some RMMs that allow IT pros to remotely manage any computer from anywhere in the world. These solutions are able to do so by having an agent installed on the endpoint that constantly communicates to an RMM server and show when a machine is online or offline through a customizable portal. The portal is a key part of these remote management solutions, showing a summary of what’s going on, giving both an overview of each client and the ability to drill down to issues with a specific endpoint. For example, if a machine hasn’t run a software scan for more than 30 days, a support ticket can automatically be created. RMMs monitor and notify on a wide range of events, keeping endpoints secure and running properly.

Patching is just one of the actions you can perform through an RMM. Installing or updating software is extremely important to ensure your users are fully functional from Day 1. With just a few clicks, all standard applications are installed on an endpoint. This process makes it 85 percent faster to have machines up and running in a day. 

For many clients, we can set up a new machine remotely, without physical access to it and with minimal intervention from the client. Once a new endpoint is online, software updates can be pushed from a software catalog and from custom installation scripts. Custom installers and scripts are a powerful way to adapt the RMM to each client, but testing is critical. At Rhythmic, we test each script using test computers and virtual machines in our lab before pushing to the endpoints to ensure installers are ready for every type of endpoint and operating system.

RMMs give the ability to run customizable scripts, apply software and system updates, remotely access a machine, and monitor for security and health events in real-time. They ensure that every endpoint is managed to the same exacting standards and that users are not inconvenienced by the day-to-day work that IT needs to do.