GroundWork ships new open source IT management suite

GroundWork starts shipping its systems and network management suite GroundWork Monitor

IT management software specialist GroundWork Open Source will today begin shipping the latest version of its systems and network management suite GroundWork Monitor in the UK.

Tony Barbagallo, vice president of product management at the company, said version five of GroundWork Monitor featured new service level availability reporting capabilities and a dashboard designer that allows users to tailor the suite's monitoring dashboard for different users.

"It means a business executive can get a simpler view of how a few key services are operating, while the network administrator can still have a dashboard that shows a more detailed view of network performance," he said.

As with the previous version of the suite, GroundWork said it would be available as a free-to-download open source version and as a subscription license Professional Version that includes updates and support capabilities.

Barbagallo said the enhancements to the latest version made it a viable alternative to established proprietary systems, such as HP OpenView and IBM's Tivoli. "There are three layers to IT management software: basic monitoring; systems that tell you something's wrong and then recommend what to do; and policy-based actions systems that automatically correct problems," he said. " The established vendors talk a lot about the top two layers but, in a lot of cases, are still just delivering the basic monitoring. Open source is a wake up call for them to deliver on the two upper layers."

He added that infrastructure management software was a natural target for the open source movement. "The [software] stack has been open sourced so the next step is the technology to monitor what's going on in that stack," he said. " Systems, network and application management is the logical evolution for open source."