Posts from — May 2007

• BMC Acquires ProactiveNet, Gains Analytics - Enterprise Applications - Network Computing
  BMC Software has announced it is buying privately held IT systems analytics vendor ProactiveNet. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
  (tags: BMC proactivenet bsm business-service-management m&a)
• BMC to Acquire Proactivenet
  Once the acquisition is complete, BMC intends to package the ProactiveNet software with its performance management tools and the BMC Event Manager.

  “It can collect information from other third-party tools, so we could package it with our event management

  (tags: BMC proactivenet bsm business-service-management m&a)

• SolarWinds nabs Calif. company
  Austin-based SolarWinds has bought Neon Software, a Lafayette, Calif.-based provider of mapping and visualization technology. With the acquisition, SolarWinds will expand its existing network management products.
  (tags: solarwinds networkmanagement networkdiscoveryandtopology monitoring m&a)
• Enterprise Security Information & Event Log Management, USB Protection & Security
  Detecting today’s multi-vector, blended threats, requires high peformance event correlation. Only TriGeo delivers in-memory correlation using patent-pending 64bit technology.
  (tags: TriGeo networkmanagement sim seim security)

• Quest Software Enters Business Services Management Market
  Quest Software, Inc. (Nasdaq:QSFT) today announced its entry into the business services management (BSM) market, one of the fastest growing segments of IT systems management, with the acquisition of BSM vendor Magnum Technologies. The addition of Magnum a
  (tags: QuestSoftware Foglight magnum-technology business-service-management bsm m&a)
• IBM Shows Impact of SOA
  Also, IBM’s expanded Business Activity Monitoring software includes adapters that monitor activity from a variety of sources, including third-party software, can provide a single comprehensive view of business activity across an enterprise regardless of i
  (tags: IBM SOA BAM business-activity-monitoring EDA ESP Websphere)
• ProactiveNet Hones SLA Management
  ProactiveNet, the David of the Business Service Management realm, on May 30 will launch a new version of its namesake software to compete with BSM Goliaths such as Mercury Interactive and BMC Software.

  ProactiveNet 7.0 goes toe-to-toe with Mercury’s prod

  (tags: proactivenet user-experience transx-monitoring synthetictranx bsm business-service-management)

Quest Software announced their intentions to acquire Business Service Management vendor Magnum Technologies today.

I’m not sure of how much penetration Quest has ever gotten into the larger enterprise accounts with their full Foglight solution, but they have had broader success across the board with their various point tools for databases/applications, Java and Windows. Foglight (and it’s counterpart Big Brother) and the Spotlight products/plugins play firmly into the IT organization silos. They’ve got some great diagnostics capabilities and very “geek” oriented dashboards for managing, tweeking and tuning databases and applications. I’ve never seen too much of a top down, business oriented, non-IT focus other than messaging from Quest’s Foglight line in what I’d say was a true Business Service Mangement manner like other vendors have today. In my past, I helped break in Foglight 4 into an environment with upwards of 2000+ servers and hundreds of services/processes/transactions and it wasn’t a painless process. Foglight 5 is out now and at least looks like they’ve done some of the things they talked about in roadmap sessions I was familiar with in 2004-05. I am not sure how the backend architecture changed which was where all the problems existed for large deployments. A great product for environments with a few hundred servers!

It looks like the Magnum acquisition could be what Quest needs to get a real business and top down story in place and to broaden out from the pure play systems and application management space. If they play their cards right, having purpose built Business Service Management plays that are in line with Quest’s strengths that visibility into systems/application/databases, Java and Windows and SMART pricing/packaging could be very attractive for the SMB market. I know little about Magum’s Business Service Management solution and do not know anyone who uses it. I do know IBM Tivoli OEM’s some of their network discovery technology in the IBM Tivoli Netview family. More emphasis on network monitoring and management would also be a plus for Quest as well. They could easily take on share from the likes of the What’s Up Gold, Solarwinds and Open Source Software folks if they can find a way to “unify” the IT organization silos into a single vendor/solution strategy.

Should be interesting to follow the integration messaging!

• Service level management software gets interesting
  So why would an enterprise opt for the integration route over single architecture? Here are the typical reasons: * they already have significant investments, * they want a strategic vendor partnership that covers a broad range of IT processes, and the
  (tags: servicelevelmanagement slo sla upc)
• IBM Redbooks | Building Integrated Applications with WebSphere Dashboard Framework
  WebSphere Dashboard Framework gives application developers the power to create rich graphical interfaces to business data which allow the end user to make key decisons upon that data. WebSphere Dashboard Framework also provides powerful collaboaration fea
  (tags: IBM Websphere Dashboards)

• alphaWorks Services | IBM Development Engagement Service | Overview
  (tags: ajax development ibm web2.0 web)
• IBM releases free tool for creating Web apps - Network World
  IBM on Wednesday released a free Web application development tool aimed at users in small businesses who lack the technical skills often needed to build applications.
  (tags: IBM alphaWorks SaaS web2.0 ajax)

Looks like our execs started a blog during the TTUC conference last week with the intentions of getting our valued clients involved in the converstation on how Tivoli can improve.

I hope this stays alive and can serve as a viable way to dialogue directly with those who make things happen here. This could be the perfect forum for our “tools group” heros who are a few layers removed from dealing with management and IBM Tivoli routinely to share their stories from the deckplates of their organization.

Not much here yet, but all it takes is someone to jump in!

TTUC 2007 — Heroic stories, lessons learned and Service Management value