Microsoft shoots for management giants

Microsoft is trying to boost its standing in the busy systems management market

Microsoft is taking aim at IBM-Tivoli, HP, CA and BMC as it bids to challenge the leaders in heterogeneous systems management.

Although its systems management products have built growing respect, Microsoft has long been regarded as a provider of tools for Windows-dominated environments.
However, the software giant now believes that by leveraging web services and cross-platform file formats, developing tools for monitoring non-Microsoft domains and tapping third-party partners, it will have a stack to compete with established enterprise names.

Microsoft will have a busy 2007 with a stream of products scheduled for release under the System Centre umbrella brand. Operations Manager (MOM) and Configuration Manager – updates to the current MOM and SMS products – will appear, alongside Essentials - mid-market systems management, Virtual Machine Manager and Data Protection Manager.

More important than all could be a product codenamed Service Desk that has just gone into private beta testing and is scheduled for release in late 2007.

Service Desk will tap Microsoft’s SML modelling language and a new configuration management database (CMDB) to track all IT assets within an organisation. Firms will then be able to better discover assets, fix helpdesk problems, improve server utilisation and manage software licensing, Microsoft argued.

Together with developments such as the WS-Management specification, open file formats such as XML and third-party relationships with Quest Software and others, Microsoft contends that it has the ability to challenge the traditional systems management leaders.

“When everything speaks the same language and the schemas are the same, heterogeneity as a problem goes away,” said Kirill Tatarinov, Microsoft vice-president for enterprise management.

“One customer said it had taken them 10 years to build their service desk, which means they basically built it themselves. We want to change that and the CMDB is at the heart of enterprise management. This is the ERP of IT.”