Level Platforms is making it easier for the channel to remotely monitor and manage both on-premises technology and managed services that are increasingly becoming part of customers' IT environments.

The company has launched the Managed Cloud Services program, which offers support for Microsoft hosted applications like the Business Productivity Online Suite that features Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Office Live Meeting, as well as groupSPARK's private-label Exchange hosting services.

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The whole basis of remote monitoring and management services has been around on-premises customer equipment, but the IT environment is changing to include not just on-premises technology but also cloud computing applications, said Peter Sandiford, CEO of Level Platforms. Customer IT environments are increasingly becoming a mix of on-premises and cloud technology.

"What we've done then is built a set of technologies to allow the service provider to be able to view on their dashboard the performance of those hosted applications," he said.

Level Platforms' remote monitoring and management software provides a dashboard where service providers can view their customers' environments and get warnings, alerts and comprehensive reports. Now the company has included the Microsoft hosted services as part of the dashboard so they can view the on-premises and hosted environments.

However, this is just the first step in the rollout of the Managed Cloud Services program, Sandiford said. With the plethora of different software-as-a-service offerings on the market, the company has plans to continue to incorporate the ability to monitor other cloud applications into its remote monitoring and management software.

Sandiford noted that the relevance of on-premises remote monitoring and management is becoming less because of the increased adoption of cloud applications. While he said monitoring on-premises infrastructure is—and will continue to be—important for service providers, to maintain their relevancy in the eyes of the customer they'll also have to begin to support hosted applications in the same way.