Consoles centralise control

Enterprise systems management is an unglamorous business, defined as the ability to monitor performance of networks, computers and components through job scheduling, output management, configuration handling and other arcane tasks. But this staid world is stirring as IBM builds Tivoli into a mega-console for the back office. For IBM Tivoli, as well as rivals such as BMC Software, Computer Associates and HP, it has become important to add storage, security, Web site performance monitoring and other management abilities to core features to meet firms' needs.

As firms centralise activities and consolidate servers, holistic systems management consoles are the obvious solution for burgeoning tasks such as controlling storage allocation, securing online data, carrying out return- on-investment routines, and managing service levels.

Centralisation is largely a response to the sweeping changes affecting IT architectures. Previously, administrators may have focused on Oracle database or SAP R/3 enterprise resource planning performance to ensure core IT systems were functioning, but online business systems require interdependent applications.

One way the vendors of systems management tools are improving their products is through acquisitions. IBM Tivoli agreed two acquisitions in the past two months, picking up storage resource management firm TrelliSoft and Access360, a developer of software for managing user identities and access rights. This month's revision of Tivoli includes an Identity Manager tool based on Access360 technology; a Privacy Manager for automating privacy policies; and VeriSign Access Management for hosted access control.

The broadening is in keeping with comments made by Tivoli general management Robert LeBlanc at the DeveloperWorks conference in San Francisco earlier this year. In an interview with IT Week, LeBlanc said he wanted to integrate automated monitoring abilities and simplify them to make Tivoli equally useful to business managers and IT managers alike.

"People want to be able to talk to the business unit in business terms," he said. "(The process is) still in its infancy but it's starting to take systems management away from being a black box or boiler-room type of activity. If we succeed, companies won't lose operational skills but people will be free to solve real business problems and take cost out of the system."

To meet that objective, Tivoli has been busily adding features gained through internal development, acquisition, or partnership. It has allied with VeriSign for PKI security and certificate management, and with Magnum Technologies for network performance monitoring, for example.

Other vendors are also improving their tools for systems management. Computer Associates recently released software under its eTrust brand, integrating identity and access management from the Security Command Centre console, and linking to the Unicenter systems management framework. It is also working to more closely monitor user response times and service levels, including Web infrastructure performance.

Late last year, HP added capabilities for Internet usage management to its OpenView product to help managers understand usage and billing patterns

Despite the tentacles of systems management firms reaching out to new territories, makers of standalone products are confident that they can continue to operate outside the "one-stop-shop" approach.

Gordon Eubanks, chief executive of identity management specialist Oblix, said that by ensuring compatibility with key platforms and applications, software developers can differentiate their products and may even be preferred by buyers who fear being locked into a single vendor for all their management tools. For example, users of Access360 products may worry that IBM will pay less attention to developing the software for Oracle than to developing it for the IBM DB2 database. "The reality is that IBM is bound to develop technology to the exclusion of competitors," Eubanks argued.

IT veterans who recall the high charges that IBM, Digital, HP and others were able to demand in the days when the mainframe and closed systems dominated will be wary of being tied to one vendor. For others, however, the ability to have a bird's eye view of all operations will be highly attractive.

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