Don't fall prey to the desktop mgmt. food chain

Nature teaches us the inevitability of the food chain, in which dominant predators survive at the expense of lower life forms. Competitive capitalism works in much the same way: Smaller players should beware when the heavies start eyeing their market niche - in this case, desktop management.

Until the middle of last year, vendors such as Bull HN Information Systems, Computer Associates, Hewlett-Packard and IBM/Tivoli paid little attention to desktop management.

Instead, they were fighting to dominate the enterprise network and distributed server management arenas. All four vendors provided desktop solutions, but as a check-off item, not a heavily promoted strategic direction.

Indeed, conventional wisdom held that Microsoft would largely determine the fate of desktop management, leaving only scattered leftovers for the losers. However, this scenario lost credibility as the limited focus of Microsoft's management products became increasingly apparent. Consider that the top three desktop management functions are applications management, configuration management and virus checking. Microsoft's Systems Management Server only reluctantly acknowledges (and manages) other vendor's products. Intel, not Microsoft, owns the configuration management space; Symantec and McAfee Associates lead desktop virus management.

Meanwhile, sleeping giants CA, HP and Tivoli awoke and realized that consolidated desktop management offered an ideal opportunity for differentiation. Specifically, the players focused on desktop management products with built-in, enterprise-level scalability. Sufficiently feature-rich enterprise solutions could replace current LAN management suites in one fell swoop.

CA, HP and Tivoli began targeting this niche - CA with its MERIT project to identify missing enterprise desktop functionality and its Enterprise/CSi product; HP with its Desktop Administrator, a desktop manager fully integrated with an enterprise-level management platform; and Tivoli with reinvigorated promotion of its Multi-Platform Manager initiative and LAN Management modules for integrating enterprise and desktop solutions.

Today's enterprise solutions fall short in desktop management because of their historical scalability/functionality trade-off. Enterprise management solutions have the scalability to replace desktop suites, but not the features. While enhancement efforts have started, expect gaps through at least late 1998.

However, it's clear that enterprise management vendors view the desktop as their next big cash cow. Pursuing this trend will push desktop management suites out of lucrative large corporate accounts, leaving the suite vendors to fight over small-to-midsize firms. Suite makers that read the writing on the wall will either change and grow their solutions (for example, the McAfee/Pretty Good Privacy/Network General merger) or get crowded into an even rougher, margin-thin niche.

What does this mean for you? On the upside, look for increased functionality in scalable solutions and real cost savings as competition for your business becomes increasingly cutthroat. On the downside, internal IT power struggles could emerge as LAN administrators fight enterprise-based administration to retain power and job security.

Before selecting an enterprise-level desktop management solution, identify and prioritize short- and long-term management requirements.

What functions and information are required at the local and enterprise levels? What level of integration is required between the levels? Can the vendor deliver the required integration with your installed or preferred enterprise platform?

Addressing questions like these beforehand may keep you from becoming a victim of the food-chain phenomenon.

Ptak is director of systems management research for D.H. Brown Associates, Inc., an industry research and consulting firm in Port Chester, N.Y. He can be reached at rlptak@dhbrown.com.