The e-movement has exerted a major influence over systems
management tools. We assess developments with special reference to
Tivoli and Computer Associates' offerings.
Over the last couple of years the leading systems management
software suppliers have been rapidly extending their products to
meet the demands of e-business. As Jan Lindelow, ceo of IBM's
system management subsidiary Tivoli Systems puts it: 'We are moving
towards total infrastructure integration, tying e-business
applications into the enterprise, both within and beyond the
firewall.'
A whole new market has opened up for systems management. As well as
their traditional large corporate customers, the suppliers are
targeting ISPs, ASPs and Managed Service Providers.
According to a September 2000 Business Wire report, Unicenter TNG
was global market leader in 1999, with 23.3 per cent, followed by
Tivoli Systems with 17.3 per cent. After that was BMC Software's
Patrol (10.6 per cent), and HP OpenView (4.8 per cent). Other
surveys make Tivoli the European market leader.
Such umbrella figures conceal the fact that the major suppliers
have different strengths. CA and Tivoli are among the leaders in
storage management. BMC Patrol is said to have the best integration
capabilities when it comes to taking data feeds from other systems
management products.
HP claims that Openview is managing 70 per cent of all devices on
the internet
In some ways, the big suppliers face a much more complex task than
the specialists and start-ups who concentrate on one niche
offering. Their new modules must be integrated with existing
products. Tivoli's portfolio includes around a hundred management
modules, and CA Unicenter's over 80.
As Gartner Group research director Milind Govekar warns, old IT
never dies; it doesn't even fade away. It's still there under
multiple layers of newer technology. 'So not only do you have to
manage MVS and client-server, but internet apps, web servers and
wireless devices and access as well.'
Govekar says that in e-business and web management, the traditional
systems management suppliers are trailing behind niche players who
carry much less historical baggage. They do, however, have the
clout, and deep pockets, to acquire the best of the best of
breeds.
They also have the advantage of a framework or infrastructure
designed to accommodate new or acquired modules though huge
libraries of APIs. Tivoli and Unicenter have grown as much though
partnership and acquisition as home-grown development. (Tivoli for
example includes IBM's Netview, once the near-identical twin of HP
Openview.)
As a CA white paper on its framework puts it: 'A basic assumption
of the framework paradigm is that over time, most organisations
choose hardware and operating systems that are best suited to the
tasks at hand, creating a distributed, heterogeneous computing
environment. A management framework is layered on top of this
hodgepodge of systems and networks in order to provide core
integration services. The customer plugs in some combination of
management applications that apply to the specific mix of elements
requiring management. The existence of a standard framework, with
open APIs and a shared user interface, allows the customer to build
a cooperative yet customisable environment.'
Positive views of frameworks are not universal. In a report on BMC
Patrol published in February, Enterprise Management Associates
found that medium-size to large enterprises first invested in
systems management framework products, so that they could manage
their internal networks. As they begin to deploy their online
businesses, they are trying to use those same tools to manage the
new systems. Unfortunately, these tools were not originally
designed with 24x7, 99.999 per cent uptime, and 4 second response
times in mind.
EMA found that virtually all large enterprises have at least one,
if not two, framework enterprise management products. 'The
complexity of these products means that IT staff must specialise on
certain framework products, therefore removing valuable staff
members from general systems management,' the EMA analysts write.
EMA finds that the dream of consolidating systems management
applications is largely unrealised, although they say BMC provides
the best environment for this.
Other criticisms address the high cost and lengthy implementation
of frameworks. Suppliers marketing material implies that they
arrive on a CD, and will work 'out of the box'. The reality, as IDC
and others see it, is at least a six figure investment, which for
the largest corporations can rise to eight figures. IDC says
companies will spend three dollars on services for every dollar
spent on software licenses.
No end-user in the world uses the complete Tivoli or Unicenter
portfolio, and products need to be selected, customised, and
configured. Implementation can run for nine months to two years in
the case of large installations, while the world they were
introduced to manage is rapidly moving on.
The companies are doing their best to make it easier, with products
like Tivoli Business Systems Manager, that give a total view of the
environment - what's there, and what's needed - in business, rather
than technical jargon.
There's a new emphasis on simplicity, backed with services, such as
Tivoli's Rapid Deployment initiative. And products are being
rationalised, reducing the bewildering variety. What's the
difference between Tivoli NetView for OS/390 and Tivoli Manager for
OS/390, for example?
Disappearing word
While CA majors on its framework, the
word has disappeared from Tivoli's documentation. The core Tivoli
management product suite is now called the e-business
Infrastructure Management Solutions. This concentrates on security,
storage, availability, and performance, operations and service
providers.
Tivoli makes much of its huge stable of Business Partners, claiming
that between them, they cover the full range of customer
requirements. Tivoli will also work with the customer's choice of
service provider.
In recent months Tivoli has concentrated on attracting web services
firms to enhance its e-business infrastructure solutions. The web
services Business Partners work with Tivoli to provide consulting,
architecture, design, implementation, and customisation of
e-business infrastructures for customers. The tools available to
this new breed of Business Partner include Tivoli Web Solutions,
security management, storage management, mobile e-business, and
service provider management products.
Tivoli has also been hard at work bringing its traditional systems
management products into the e-business world. In February they
announced major enhancements to Tivoli NetView for OS/390, which
they claim is already installed in 950 of Dun and Bradstreet's
1,000 key businesses. Early European users of the new release
include ING Bank and British Telecom.
Tivoli Business Systems Manager combines the features of Tivoli
Global Enterprise and Tivoli Manager for OS/390. 'The Tivoli
Business Systems Manager solution provides us with business views
and control mechanisms to manage all of our distributed IT
resources in the retail banking and e-business environments -
including system resources, databases, application servers, web
servers and e-business applications-from one central location,'
says Gerd Waechter, Tivoli Services Manager of Dresdner Bank's
Global IT Services.
But the growth is definitely in the service provider sector.
'Shortages of IT personnel and increasingly complex e-commerce
applications are accelerating outsourcing of web hosting,
e-commerce, and other mission critical applications,' according to
Ford Cavallari of management consultants firm Adventis.
Also in February, Tivoli announced a series of new partnerships
with ASPs, MSPs and Security Service Providers. Over the past year,
Tivoli claims to have more than doubled its solutions and services
business with such 'Net Generation companies', and to have formed
partnerships with over 65 service providers worldwide.
Tivoli Net Generation products include e-business management
integrity solutions, which ensure viability and security of
e-business infrastructure components; service assurance solutions,
which support quality-of-service (QoS) objectives and service level
agreements; and service enablement solutions, which enable
providers to manage the entire lifecycle of a service.
Tivoli also has initiatives for B2B e-marketplaces, including
Tivoli e-Marketplace Manager and a collaboration with Ariba.
Many of the third party products awarded 'Tivoli Ready'
certification in the last year are aimed at ASPs, either providing
them with ways of offering new services, or of making their own
infrastructure more robust and secure. They include the Apache
webserver, Checkpoint firewalls, Cisco routers, IBM's WebSphere
Commerce Suite and MQ Series Integrator, JSB SurfControl, Marimba's
Castanet, and Microsoft IIS 4.
But Butler Group analyst David Burman thinks CA has done a better
job of moving into new markets. 'Computer Associates appears to
have positioned Unicenter TNG more effectively, not purely in the
enterprise space.' Unicenter 2.4 includes management capabilities
specifically tailored for the Managed Service Provider market. CA
is also offering licensing terms specifically tailored to emerging
MSP business models.
CA groups its solutions into three categories, e-business Process
Management, e-business Information Management and e-business
Infrastructure Management, which certainly makes their strategy
easier to grasp for those with a business, rather than technical,
background.
'Managing the next generation of e-business involves managing the
e-business processes that flow across organisational boundaries,
with an ever-increasing number of stakeholders,' says Allan
Andersen, CA vp for enterprise management. 'The complexity of these
environments is compounded by new technologies, such as wireless
PDA devices, and Wap phones. This must all be managed to receive
the same level of security, availability, reliability, and
performance we have come to expect from traditional IT.'
There are two key new technologies in Unicenter. The object
database management system Jasmine ii, long regarded as a brilliant
solution looking for a problem, has found a role as a platform for
seamless integration of e-business systems. It also provides
services, such as messaging, XML and Java object management.
Embedded in the Unicenter framework is a patented CA technology
called Neugents, which performs the monitoring and filtering tasks,
on which the control functions are built. 'Neugents are agents
built upon neural networking techniques,' Butler's Burman explains.
'Knowing that an e-business server is likely to fail in 12 hours,
if corrective action is not taken, is absolutely crucial in the 24
x 7 x 365 business world of the 21st century.'
Whatever the criticisms, the future of the Tivoli and Unicenter
frameworks seems assured, not least because because they are
inextricably woven into a huge installed base. They also provide a
fixed point in a turbulent world.
Figures from Gartner and others suggest that there are around 200
companies providing systems and network management products, but
that this figure masks a volatile situation, with around a third of
these companies disappearing and being replaced every couple of
years. There will always be a place for genuine best-of-breeds, but
most organisations will continue to use a core technology from
Tivoli, CA, BMC, or HP to make sense of them.
Market set to double
Revenues in the worldwide
enterprise system management software market jumped 23 per cent in
1999, to nearly $12bn. IDC estimates the market will increase
another 117 per cent by 2004. Storage management is the fastest
growing sector, followed by performance management
According to IDC vp Paul Mason, factors behind this expansion
include e-commerce growth, the IT skills shortage, the deployment
of storage area networks, and the increasing popularity of
non-traditional IT devices. 'Additionally, if suppliers can show
the middle market that system management software is cost
effective, these firms will give the market a big boost.'
ASP case study
Tivoli is providing cross-platform
systems management solutions to UK ASP Keytech. The Tivoli
enterprise management software will drive new outsourced management
business for Keytech, with existing customers being transferred to
the Tivoli system. Tivoli products will handle software
distribution, user administration, distributed monitoring, remote
control and inventory services. Keytech customers include Sharp
Electronics and William Hill.
Not in my back end
Management of traditional
distributed network and client-server systems is moving away from
customer premises, and back to a remote mainframe-like model of
datacentre delivery. According to IDC, a new type of service
provider, the networked infrastructure management services (NIMS)
provider, is emerging.
'NIMS providers will be delivering management services for a broad
range of networks - including local and wide area networks,
intranets, extranets, the internet, and virtual private networks -
and networked servers, applications, and clients that are part of
these systems.'
Mobile and wireless
IBM has got together with Symbian,
the supplier of next-generation mobile phone platform software used
by Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Psion among others, to provide
management software that will enable wireless devices to be
integrated into corporate infrastructures. The new offering takes
mobile device management from Tivoli, and components from Lotus and
DB2 Anyplace.
Tivoli mobile device management allows wireless devices to 'talk'
to corporate IT systems and infrastructures. The Tivoli software
enables automatic configuration of software and services, and
manages software downloads and installation. The first complete
implementation of the IBM/Symbian solution will be shipped on the
Nokia 9210 Communicator.
Tivoli has a similar initiative with Ericsson, to develop a
comprehensive set of solutions which will enable third generation
(3G) mobile devices to be manageable out-of-the-box, and supported
and updated remotely. Ericsson and Tivoli will propose a set of
international standards for managing 3G devices, and will
collaborate with other leading suppliers to establish them.
There's also the Tivoli Smart Handheld Device Manager, which
enables operations staff to manage anything from an IBM server
zSeries to a personal digital assistant (PDA), using the same
management paradigm and user interface. Target platforms include
Palm, Microsoft and Compaq, as well as IBM's WorkPad.
Gartner Group says the average cost per handheld device is
approximately $2,700 per device per year (including technical
support, asset tracking, and synchronisation).
'Understandably, much of the hype surrounding the management of
mobile computing is centred around the management of the devices,'
says Tom Scholtz, a director at Meta Group. 'However, the critical
differentiator will be the ability to deliver on availability,
performance and security expectations by effectively managing the
underlying infrastructure, such as servers and networks, and
applications.'
SUMMARY
Organisations seeking systems management
solutions face a bewildering choice, as hundreds of new suppliers
emerge to exploit the opportunities of e-business. Traditional
suppliers like CA and Tivoli may not move as fast as these
upstarts, but their framework-based approach offers stability and
reassurance.
Nick Langley