Considering Convergence

Matthew Nickasch

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GroundWork's Silver Bullet: 87% Cost Savings Over HP

By Matthew Nickasch on Wed, 09/17/08 - 7:39am.

Simple question: Would you like to save 87% on a Network Monitoring System for your enterprise? The simple answer is almost always an enthusiastic "yes!" Groundwork Open Source made this substantial cost savings study "real" this morning in a press release and cost comparison study, detailing the potential savings from Groundwork Open Source vs. HP Operations Manager.

In a head-to-head comparison study of initial licensing, installation costs and recurring costs over a three-year period for a 3,000-node environment, GroundWork Open Source was found to provide the following advantages when compared to equivalent HP Software offerings."

"This study examines in detail the cost savings offered by GroundWork relative to comparable offerings of HP software," said Tim Clark, partner at The FactPoint Group. "The results of this study were based off of data gathered from the April 2008 HP Software BTO Price Guide, a combination of customers who have used HP software and collaboration with HP software resellers." (GroundWork)

I had the opportunity to talk with Debra Curtis, a research vice president in the Gartner IT Operations Management group. She clearly highlighted that the 'big four' network management system vendors (HP, BMC, CA, IBM), simply do not have a single dominant share in the market. Specialist vendors, like GroundWork, are able to deliver on impressive feature sets at a reduced capital cost. When asked about the risk of corporations investing in an open-source NMS solution, Curtis noted that "(investing in) open-source is not an additional source of concern."

While this cost comparison sounds very enticing, and it does, there are a few non-licensing and non-capital costs to consider. For organizations already using a product like HP Operations Manager, a migration to another NMS may incur internal human labor costs (for deployment, etc), and usage training and customization costs. These are logical and fair considerations, however, with an 87% cost savings of GroundWork over HP, there's a lot of extra money to work with.

No matter what NMS you implement, it's important to remember that the long term costs, benefits, and ROI is important. Curtis of Gartner also emphasizes considering the two-to-five-year period for analyzing overall ROI and cost savings.

Ultimately, it will be increasingly difficult for "big four" network management system vendors to compete with solutions like GroundWork. With significant ROI, feature set benefits, and an 87% savings over HP, it's very possible that the "big four" title may not exist much longer for vendors like HP, BMC, CA, and IBM.