Management vendors target e-businesses

Companies that need better visibility into the networks and applications supporting their new Internet businesses don't necessarily need to look to start-ups targeting this market. That's because established management software companies are retooling their products to work in the new e-world.

Among recent activity:

Peregrine Systems last week introduced Get. Resources, software for tracking assets that a company buys over the Internet. Peregrine also announced an alliance with business-to-business company Commerce One. The partnership is aimed at allowing users to purchase directly from Commerce One's Web site.

Candle this week will reveal it is restructuring its enterprise business group to bring together its traditional management tools with new software for e-business. Candle hired Steve Kiser, former CEO of Xerox subsidiary Chrystal Software, to help blend the two disciplines.

Compuware this month will start shipping enhancements to its EcoTools software to make it more relevant to an e-commerce environment. The software will be able to tell which Web pages get the highest number of hits, as well as measure transaction response times for servers.

Concord CEO Jack Blaeser recently said his firm will expand beyond its traditional network performance reporting software to report on the performance of e-business transactions. Concord will likely acquire other management companies next year to achieve this, he says.

The efforts by these established firms to get the extra letter "e" into everything they do just might work, according to observers.

E-business capabilities added to existing management software can be more palatable to users than brand-new software from untested companies, says David Yockelson, a vice president at the META Group consultancy. Companies would like to tie e-business management into their existing network and systems management processes, he says.

Peregrine's new software allows businesses to purchase supplies and equipment online. Get. Resources is intended to give users a way to compare different online resellers' prices and to track if shipments have been on time. The product links to Peregrine's AssetCenter asset management software, which tracks equipment throughout its useful life.

The software runs on Windows NT, is accessed via a browser, and uses Oracle, Microsoft or Sybase databases. Get.Resources is expected to ship in February. A typical installation will cost $200,000.

At Candle, "all products here have to be e-aware," says Kiser, the new vice president and group manager of Candle's enterprise computing group.

He says Candle will build a Web-based portal to manage all the types of systems the firm currently supports, plus newer e-business systems such as Web servers. Candle's existing management tools will be tied in with the portal, he says.

Compuware also is integrating its management tools as it moves into e-business. Compuware's enhancements come at a time when the company is trying to tie its EcoTools monitoring software into its EcoScope performance management tool and the capacity-planning software Compuware recently acquired from CACI International.

The new version of EcoTools will ship this month. The software starts at $700 per server.

Compuware: www.compu ware.com

Peregrine: www.peregrine. com