RiverSoft aids HP OpenView

PALO ALTO - Hewlett-Packard customers may be getting more from their OpenView systems soon as HP adds Layer 2 and Layer 3 discovery and topology information to its flagship management platform.

HP has agreed to license a copy of the source code for RiverSoft's Network Management Operating System (NMOS) Version 3 for use in its OpenView products.

"We saw that we needed to aggressively fill a hole around our Layer 2 discovery components," says Cristina Mahon, HP OpenView project generation general manager.

She says HP intends to integrate the Layer 2 and Layer 3 discovery and topology information into OpenView and use it to advance the product's status-monitoring capabilities.

"The technology we are acquiring is really enabling us to power everything else we have," she says.

Mahon says HP chose RiverSoft instead of developing its own technology to save time.

RiverSoft's NMOS technology includes Active Object Classes that enable the RiverSoft discovery system to collect connectivity information from devices used in IP networks. The system can then reconcile conflicting and misleading information concerning network devices and store a consistent topography of those devices in the topography database.

When a device has an NMOS active object class, any other application using NMOS can discover and manage that device automatically, with little human intervention, RiverSoft says. Depending on how HP decides to integrate NMOS, this technology will let OpenView users take advantage of more automated and scalable network management.

"If HP uses the technology where it makes the most logical sense, it will give users the functionality for which they have been clamoring," says Valerie O'Connell, managing director of enterprise management at Aberdeen Group.

She says integrating NMOS into OpenView could establish NMOS as the "de facto standard for IP-based network management."

HP: www.hp.com; RiverSoft: www. riversoft.com