Businesses demand flexible computing power in the 21st century. IT managers must implement new systems and advance existing hardware and software that provide a manageable, secure, and scalable framework for their companies. Further, they need to develop a framework that they can change easily and quickly. Vendors are now developing framework management software designed to give IT managers an edge in the battle to stay ahead of the curve.
Obviously, the nature of supporting corporate systems changed. IT managers used to carefully plan each upgrade. Now they need to anticipate future applications that will keep their companies competitive. That does not mean that they no longer need to provide careful needs assessment and to develop solid convergence and upgrade policies. Rather, IT companies require the same careful planning in less time.
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This comes at a time where the cost of supporting each workstation continues to climb. The cost of networking, workstations, and applications software is dropping, but each change requires people to support the systems, install the software and upgrades to existing software, and configure the network. Users complicate the task as they introduce applications that the company may not support. In essence, this creates a custom workstation for each workstation, introducing potential conflicts to the overall network, and it makes the job of supporting workers more difficult.
Taking Control
It is time for IT managers to take more control, and a few software vendors are addressing the task of managing the framework. Generally, these products are integrated suites of software that provide a selection of services, including inventory management, compliance verification, application software monitoring, automated software distribution, remote management access, and diagnostics.
Keeping the Data
Reporting and user interfaces remain important functions. Software can perform flawlessly, but if it is not easy to use, it will not provide full benefits. Similarly, weak reporting that does not allow managers to customize output and manipulate data limits the application’s usefulness. IT managers need to ascertain how robust the reporting is, and they should be comfortable with the interface.
In addition, IT managers must verify the security features in any framework management product. These products collect important information about the company’s network and its workstations. They also provide a direct route to each workstation on the network. Managers need to protect the application from intruders and guard the data the application generates.
Know the Vendor
Networks will continue to expand, and IT managers will have less time to adapt to new business demands. Framework management systems can help, but managers should require the system to support a broad range of computing platforms. The framework management system also must be scalable to support additional functions and network additions. Therefore, the vendor’s ability to deliver quality packages and update those products in a timely, responsive manner becomes critical. Running a network is hard work already. No one wants to convert to a new framework management system each time the network changes. That would only add to problems and obscure the benefits of framework management.
This product briefing was first published on CrossNodes, an internet.com site.
By Dayna DelmonicoA few years ago, some large organizations decided they needed some type of ‘framework’ to be able to cost effectively manage their enterprises. Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s) complied. Now, with frameworks widely deployed and supported, systems management is not only easier but the software market is expected to grow from $13 billion this year to $25 billion by 2005. Framework management, in essence, is systems management on steroids.
If you’re a large enterprise-class corporation, an ISP for instance, you’ve already got a management framework in place. For most customers, however, whatever systems and network management suite they’re using is based on some framework. Whether they know it or not, they have a starting point or framework they can use to build a flexible system management environment that can blend old and new technologies and mixed IT environments and scale to large enterprise environments.
However, framework management suffers from a lack of definitions. Vendors call it Enterprise Systems Management, infrastructure management and/or eBusiness infrastructure management. Each apporach implements framework management to provide seamless control of IT resources.
A management framework that is fairly well known is Computer Associates’ Unicenter TNG Framework. TNG provides ‘out-of-the-box’ support for a broad range of hardware platforms and framework technologies like object repository and auto discovery. It forms the foundation for Unicenter TNG (now Unicenter 3.0 Network & Systems Management), which is CA’s modular and integrated management solution. This covers many enterprise functions, including networks, performance, events and status, security, software distribution, inventory storage, workload control, helpdesk and change management.
For more on framework management and/or systems management, read these CrossNodes articles:
Framework Management Vendors
Vendor: Computer Associates Product: Unicenter Description: Unicenters framework provides automatic discovery, scheduling, virus detection, monitoring from the even management console and management object repository. Unicenter is CA's family of integrated Infrastructure Management solutions for systems, networks, databases, web resources, applications, and end-user devices. www3.ca.com/Solutions/Brand.asp?id=3053 Vendor: Hewlett-Packard Prodct: OpenView Express Description: OpenView Express manages Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000, Terminal Server, or NetWare environment. Features integrated event correlation, thresholding, alarming, and reporting. OpenView Express bundles three integrated HP OpenView products (Network Node Manager, ManageX, and OmniBack II). Provides real-time monitoring and full data protection of the Active Directory Service (ADS) database. manages more than 30 applications and utilities, including Exchange 5.5/2000, IIS, SQL Server, and others from vendors such as Microsoft, Lotus, Oracle, Sybase, Compaq, Dell, VERITAS, McAffee, Norton, and Cisco. www.managementsoftware.hp.com/products/express/index.asp Vendor: Microsoft Corp. Product: Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) OS(s): Win NT; Win 2000 Description: Enterprise-class solutions for operations management of Windows 2000, the Active Directory service and other component services in Windows 2000, as well as .NET Enterprise Server applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server. Mixed IT environments extensions are available from third-party software vendors like NetIQ. www.microsoft.com/mom/evaluation/overview/default.asp Vendor: Tivoli Software Product: Management Framework OS(s): Win NT; Win 2000; HP-UX; IBM-AIX; OS/2/400 Description: The Tivoli Management Framework is the foundation for other Tivoli Enterprise and third-party management products. It provides the graphical desktop, object-oriented databases, and base services used by other products. www.tivoli.com/products/index/mgt_framework/
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