Vendor Spotlight: Cacti

Cacti is one of the longest-running network monitoring systems available. It is a free tool and is actually a front-end for another free system, called RRDtool. This system has a small footprint and it works efficiently, based on the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), which is the mechanism at the heart of most network device performance monitoring systems. A great benefit of this technology is that it is already loaded on all network devices when you buy them and it doesn’t just monitor devices, it also discovers them.

Founding and Background

The Cacti software existed before the company that owns it. It was written by Ian Berry, who was still at school at the time. Berry had learned about the Round Robin Database Tool (RRDtool), which is an open-source package created by Tobias Oetiker.

Without knowing it, Berry actually had a lot in common with Oetiker, like him, this industrious self-taught Swiss developer was an early creator of useful free tools. Oetiker also created MRTG and SmokePing, which were groundbreaking and inspired many of the major network monitoring systems that are successful today.

RRDtool was a good choice for monitoring systems. It holds a limited number of time-series values, dropping the oldest statistic when a new reading arrives. So, periodically loading in the whole set gets you a constantly updating readout. A number of other well-known monitoring systems are based on RRDtool, including Nagios, OpenNMS, and Zenoss Core.

One problem with RRDtool is that it is available on a GNU General Public License. That means it can be used for free by anyone, but it can’t form part of a tool that is sold for profit. So, the packages that integrate the system also need to be free to use.

Whether Berry had ideas of making a great fortune when he wrote Cacti is unknown. However, over the years, he never rewrote the system to use a different values store, which he could have done if he wanted to start charging a fee for Cacti. In fact, the code for Cacti is pretty static and hasn’t changed much since the original version that Ian Berry released back in 2001. After 23 years in existence, the current release is version 1.2.28.

Berry set up a website for his tool very quickly. The domain was registered in January 2000, while Berry was still working on his new network monitoring system. That indicates that even from the very beginning, Berry’s plan was to create a system that would be available publicly – he wasn’t just tinkering. Although he was still in high school, Berry was also working part-time for an internet service provider, so he was a very busy person.

Berry lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and he is still based there. Development on the project was slow because Berry had to finish school and go through University. However, Berry was able to build a team of part-time developers who helped him with the open-source project for free.

In May 2007, Berry set up The Cacti Group, Inc. as a non-profit corporation. The Cacti software was up to release 0.8.7 in October 2007. In August 2009, Berry registered the company The Cacti Group, Inc. as a domestic Profit corporation, replacing the non-profit organization.

In both of its formats, the company is registered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Berry started up a number of other projects between the creation of Cacti and the registration of the company that owns it. He went on to found other businesses and currently runs three startups that own software that he invented.

The Cacti project has moved slowly, and the push to get up to release 1.0 was put on hold in 2013. That version was finally released in 2017. With all of its contributors only working on Cacti in their spare time and with Berry busy with many other projects, Cacti hasn’t reached its full potential. The business has never sought funding and hasn’t made any moves to commercialize. A number of project sponsors, sourced through the GitHub sponsorship scheme, provide project funds. The company also invites donations.

Timeline and Evolution

Without much corporate activity, information about The Cacti Group, Inc. is hard to come by. The company doesn’t maintain a publicist or issue press releases; scraped company information sites have incomplete or incorrect records about The Cacti Group, Inc. However, here is a basic timeline for the company.

2001: Development of Cacti Software

• Ian Berry starts developing Cacti, a graphing tool designed to make use of RRDTool (Round Robin Database Tool). The goal was to simplify network performance monitoring by offering a graphical front end for tracking metrics like bandwidth usage.
• The tool quickly gained popularity among network administrators due to its ease of use, scalability, and support for Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), allowing users to collect data from various devices.

2002: Open-Source Release

• Cacti is released as open-source software. The release attracts a broad community of users and developers who contribute to the project by building plugins, templates, and expanding the software’s functionality.
• The software’s popularity grows steadily in the network monitoring community, as it provides a flexible and cost-effective solution for managing networks of various sizes.

2004-2006: Community Growth and Popularity

• The Cacti project continues to evolve with regular updates, driven primarily by community contributions. The platform becomes more feature-rich and scalable, handling larger and more complex environments.
• Cacti starts to gain recognition with businesses downloading the code and using it for free.

2007: Formation of The Cacti Group, Inc.

• The Cacti Group, Inc. is created in its first formation as a non-profit corporation.
• The company has little activity.

2009: Refounding of The Cacti Group, Inc.

• On August 10, 2009, The Cacti Group, Inc. is formally incorporated as a Michigan Domestic Profit Corporation based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• The company is established to replace the nonprofit corporation of the same name.
• The formation of The Cacti Group marks a pivotal moment where the project transitions from a purely community-driven open-source tool to a more professionally supported platform.

2017: Cacti Version 1.0 Release

• Cacti 1.0 is released in January 2017, marking a significant milestone in the software’s development. The new version brings:
  • A modernized user interface.
  • Improved performance and scalability.
  • Enhanced security and logging features.
  • Additional features for better customization and integration.
• This release reaffirms The Cacti Group’s commitment to modernizing the platform while maintaining its open-source roots.

2020s: Ongoing Development and Community Involvement

• The Cacti Group continues to release updates to Cacti, with newer versions supporting the latest network protocols, offering more customization options, and ensuring compatibility with modern IT infrastructure.
• The open-source community remains actively involved, contributing plugins and templates, while The Cacti Group provides direction and support for enterprise-grade features and solutions.
• The company also focuses on offering cloud integration, enhanced security measures, and improved performance to meet the demands of contemporary IT environments.

Evolution of Cacti Software:

• Early Years (2001-2008): Cacti was initially focused on simple network graphing and bandwidth monitoring. It grew to support larger environments with the ability to monitor a wider range of systems.
• Enhanced User Interface (2017): The 1.0 release offered a significant improvement to the user experience, providing better customization options and integration with other IT management tools.

Summary of Evolution

• 2001: Ian Berry starts developing Cacti.
• 2002: Cacti is released as open-source software.
• 2009: The Cacti Group, Inc. is incorporated.
• 2017: Release of Cacti 1.0 with major updates.
• Ongoing: Regular updates, community involvement, and professional services.

The Cacti Group, Inc. has played a crucial role in ensuring that the Cacti project remains relevant, secure, and scalable, especially as network technologies evolve. The software remains widely used by IT professionals.

Key People and Company Ownership

As of the most recent available information, The Cacti Group, Inc. is a relatively small company with a focus on providing support and services for the Cacti software, an open-source network monitoring tool. The company’s structure and leadership are closely tied to the founder and lead developer, Ian Berry, who played a crucial role in the creation and development of Cacti.

Key People

Ian Berry was the original creator of the Cacti software and has been the driving force behind its development since its inception in 2001. He started Cacti while still in high school, and over the years, he led its evolution into one of the most popular open-source network monitoring tools globally. Berry has been involved in both the technical development of Cacti and the management of The Cacti Group, Inc., which was formed in 2009 to provide commercial support for the software. As the founder and lead developer, he plays a dual role, both in guiding the technical development and leading the strategic direction of the company.

Berry has founded many other technology firms, including BitLeap, which he sold to Barracuda Networks in 2008. He currently runs three startups simultaneously. These are Nutshell, the producer of a CRM system, Cahoots, a coworking space for tech entrepreneurs, and Ampll, the provider of a day planning app. Of these three endeavors, he spends most of his time on Ampll.

Berry states that he handed over the ownership of the Cacti Project to its user community in 2010. However, he is still registered as the President of  The Cacti Group, Inc.

The most senior team member of the Cacti project listed on LinkedIn is Larry Adams, who styles himself as the current Vice President of The Cacti Group, Inc. He is listed as a director of the company at the register of the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, which is the state’s authority for company registration. Adams devotes his spare time to Cacti while focusing most of his energy on his day job as an Engineer at Qualcomm.

Company Ownership

The Cacti Group, Inc. is presumed to be primarily held by Ian Berry, given his foundational role in the company and software project. Since the company is a small private entity and there is no public listing or detailed information on external investors, it is likely that the company remains privately owned, with Berry holding a significant, if not majority, stake.

Target Market and Customer Base

The Cacti Group, Inc. targets a broad range of industries and businesses, providing network performance monitoring and infrastructure management. The company’s flagship product, Cacti, is a widely used open-source tool for network monitoring, graphing, and performance tracking. It appeals to both small and large-scale organizations.

Here’s a breakdown of The Cacti Group’s target market and customer base:

Target Market

The Cacti Group serves a diverse group of industries and businesses that require real-time monitoring for networks, servers, and systems. Key segments of its target market include:

IT and Network Administrators

• Primary Users: IT professionals and network administrators are the primary users of Cacti. They use the software to monitor bandwidth usage, server performance, network traffic, and other infrastructure metrics.
• Typical Environments: These users often work in environments where network uptime and performance are critical, such as data centers, corporate networks, and cloud services.
• Value Proposition: Cacti’s ability to scale from small to very large environments makes it suitable for organizations with both simple and complex network architectures.

Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

• Cost-Effective Monitoring: SMEs with limited IT budgets are attracted to Cacti’s open-source nature, which offers a powerful network monitoring solution without the high cost associated with commercial alternatives.
• Customization Needs: SMEs often need flexible and customizable tools for monitoring, which Cacti provides through its plugin architecture and templates.

Large Enterprises and Corporations

• Scalability: Cacti’s ability to handle large-scale environments makes it suitable for use in enterprises with complex, geographically dispersed networks.
• Enterprise Support: The Cacti Group, Inc. offers professional support and consulting services to large enterprises that need more structured support, customization, and integration into their existing IT systems.

Managed Service Providers (MSPs)

• Network Monitoring for Clients: MSPs use Cacti to provide network monitoring services to their clients, ensuring the performance of client networks and identifying issues before they become critical.
• Multi-Tenant Environments: Cacti’s ability to monitor multiple networks from a single interface makes it a valuable tool for MSPs managing several client infrastructures simultaneously.

Telecommunications and Internet Service Providers (ISPs)

• Network Monitoring and Traffic Management: ISPs and telecom companies use Cacti to monitor network traffic, bandwidth usage, and system performance across vast networks of routers, switches, and other telecommunications equipment.
• SNMP Compatibility: Cacti’s support for SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) enables it to work seamlessly with a wide range of devices common in telecommunications environments.

Government and Educational Institutions

• Cost Efficiency: Public sector organizations, such as government agencies and educational institutions, are drawn to Cacti because of its cost-effective nature and the ability to monitor large networks without needing to invest in expensive proprietary solutions.
• Customizability for Unique Infrastructure: Cacti’s flexibility allows these institutions to tailor the tool to fit the specific needs of their networks, which often include a mix of legacy and modern systems.

Customer Base

The customer base of The Cacti Group, Inc. primarily includes organizations with significant reliance on IT infrastructure and network performance. Some key characteristics of its customer base are:

Small to Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs)

• SMBs form a significant portion of Cacti’s customer base due to the software’s open-source nature and flexibility.
• These businesses benefit from using Cacti for network monitoring at a low cost, often without requiring full-time network monitoring staff.

Large Enterprises

• Enterprises that have adopted Cacti often have internal IT departments and network teams using the tool to monitor their vast and complex networks.

Government Agencies

• Public sector agencies, including municipalities and federal departments, use Cacti to monitor and manage their IT and telecommunications networks. These organizations value the software’s open-source nature and its ability to handle mission-critical infrastructure.

Educational Institutions

• Universities and colleges often rely on Cacti to monitor campus networks, server farms, and research networks. Its low cost and high flexibility are ideal for these institutions, where funding for IT infrastructure can be limited.

Telecommunications and ISPs

• Large telecom companies and ISPs that manage massive, global networks use Cacti to monitor bandwidth usage, track performance across regions, and ensure service availability.

Service Providers (MSPs)

• Managed Service Providers (MSPs) rely on Cacti to manage network performance for their clients. The multi-tenant monitoring capabilities allow them to offer services to multiple clients while ensuring the uptime of each client’s network.

Key Value Propositions for Customers

• Cost-Effectiveness: A highly functional network monitoring tool without high licensing costs.
• Scalability: Can be used for simple single-site networks or scaled up to monitor multi-site global enterprises, making it appealing across business sizes.
• Customization: Businesses can tailor the software to meet their specific monitoring needs.
• Community and Open-Source Benefits: Community contributions keep the software up-to-date and relevant for evolving network demands.

Cacti is the only product of The Cacti Group Inc. It is an efficient open-source network monitoring and graphing tool designed to track performance metrics across network devices, servers, and other IT infrastructure. It provides a comprehensive solution for network administrators to monitor bandwidth usage, system resources, and a wide range of metrics using time-series data collection and graphing. Cacti is popular for its flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, making it a staple in many IT environments.

Key Features:

• Graphing and Visualization: Detailed graphs of network and system performance over time.
• Data Collection: Sources data from a wide range of sources using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), scripts, and custom plugins.
• Device and Network Monitoring: Tracks the performance of entire networks and devices in real-time, covering routers, switches, firewalls, and other networking equipment.
• Scalability: Caters to all sizes of enterprises, scaling up to large, complex networks. It can handle hundreds or thousands of devices.
• Customizable Templates: A library of templates for different devices, which users can customize to fit their specific monitoring needs.

Graphs are based on time-series data, helping administrators monitor critical metrics such as bandwidth usage, CPU utilization, disk I/O, and more. Cacti allows users to create custom graphs based on the data collected from various sources, including SNMP, RRDtool, and other systems. It monitors different types of devices and infrastructure, including routers, switches, servers, databases, and virtual environments. The system gathers data at specified intervals, offering high flexibility in tracking performance metrics.

Cacti supports distributed polling for monitoring geographically dispersed infrastructure, reducing the load on a single server by distributing data collection across multiple pollers.

The package offers a web-based interface for managing and viewing performance data. While the earlier versions had a somewhat dated UI, the 1.0 release (January 2017) introduced a modernized interface with improved usability, making it easier for administrators to navigate and configure.

Cacti is a highly flexible and customizable open-source network monitoring solution ideal for organizations that require a highly customizable solution. However, the downside of that adaptability is that installing and setting up the system can involve technical work that requires familiarity with the conventions of Cacti and possibly programming skills.

Major Competitors

The Cacti Group, Inc. faces competition from several other network monitoring and graphing tools, many of which offer overlapping features such as network performance monitoring, graphing, alerting, and scalability.

1. Zabbix

Zabbix is an open-source network monitoring solution that is widely used for infrastructure, services, applications, and performance monitoring.

Key Features:

• Automatic discovery of network devices.
• Real-time alerting with sophisticated event management.
• Strong template system for monitoring network devices, servers, and applications.
• Rich visualization tools for graphs, maps, and dashboards.

2. Nagios

Nagios is a well-established network monitoring tool with both open-source and enterprise versions. It is highly extensible and is commonly used for monitoring hosts, services, applications, and network infrastructure.

Key Features:

• Real-time monitoring of services, network protocols, and applications.
• Alerting system for downtime and performance issues.
• Modular architecture with a wide variety of plugins and community contributions.
• Support for distributed monitoring for large-scale deployments.

3. Prometheus (with Grafana)

Prometheus is an open-source metrics collection and monitoring system that is highly popular in cloud-native environments, often paired with Grafana for visualization. It excels in monitoring cloud infrastructure and containerized environments like Kubernetes.

Key Features:

• Time-series database for metrics collection.
• PromQL query language for powerful metric queries.
• Alert manager for managing alerts and notifications.
• Integrates with Grafana for advanced visualizations and dashboards.

4. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

SolarWinds NPM is a commercial solution that provides comprehensive network monitoring and performance management. It is widely used by large enterprises that need out-of-the-box solutions for monitoring IT infrastructure.

Key Features:

• Automatic network discovery and mapping.
• Real-time network monitoring and visualization.
• Built-in alerting, reporting, and customizable dashboards.
• User-friendly interface with minimal configuration required.

5. PRTG Network Monitor

PRTG is a commercial all-in-one monitoring solution designed to be easy to set up and use. It provides monitoring of networks, servers, and applications with a strong focus on real-time performance data.

Key Features:

• Pre-configured sensors for SNMP, NetFlow, WMI, and other protocols.
• Customizable maps and dashboards for network visualization.
• Alerts and notifications for performance thresholds.
• Auto-discovery and intuitive, drag-and-drop user interface.

Spotlight Wrap-Up

The Cacti Group, Inc. is effectively a non-profit organization with its main sources of income being sponsorships and donations. The development team works in their spare time with no full-time manager to coordinate efforts. The founder has long since left the project to focus on new enterprises. This results in the Cacti system being slow to evolve.