“We have 1,200 customers – Dell has 10 million. That’s a compelling reason to hook up with a large company,” he told iTWire.

Kace already has four resellers in Australia – all of which will face stiff competition with the arrival of Dell in the mix.

With a mainly SME focus Kace has, in the 18 months it has had an Australian operation, secured about 30 clients locally including the NSW Attorney General’s Department, Young & Rubicam and Wagga Wagga Council. It has another 30 clients scattered through Asia Pacific.

According to Meinhardt the systems management appliances allow users to understand what is on their network, who’s using those devices, to provision new machines, or manage configurations which can be pushed out across a network. It has been developed to work with Mac, Windows and Linux platforms.

The company claims that besides keeping systems up to date with patches, the appliance can be used to automatically discover what software is loaded on computers and what is actually being used in order to ensure that there is no mismatch between its license payments and actual use.

“This allows users to find a rogue programme or fine tune licence payments,”  said Marty Kacin, Kace’s chief technology officer and president who is also visiting Australia. The company is also touting the green credentials of the KBox which can be used to centrally turn machines off when not in use.