We've got trouble
Survey shows network and systems management products are merely plugging holes while integration and automation problems loom large.

By Elisabeth Horwitt
Network World, 4/14/97

Alameda Hospital's IT department has been searching in vain for a product that can track ''configurations of workstations, servers and network devices,'' says Mike Moran, director of IS for the Alameda, Calif.-based hospital. So far, he has found tools that address ''bits and pieces'' of his network and systems management needs, but none that offer integrated management and allow for proactive capacity and budget planning.

''I don't think anyone has what we're looking for yet,'' Moran says.

Unfortunately, his story is typical of the 200 Network World readers, ranging from LAN managers to IT directors, interviewed for the 1997 Network World Network Management Survey. Sponsored by Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group and conducted in conjunction with McConnell Consulting, Inc., the survey painted a rather dark picture of user disgruntlement with current network and systems management offerings.

Following two years of steady - if not spectacular - increases in satisfaction levels, ratings of network and systems management products this year took a dive almost across the board. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best, satisfaction with overall improvement of systems management products dropped from 3.85 in 1996 to 3.45 this year. That's a new low, worse than the 3.5 score in 1994, the first year the survey was conducted.

Behind these numbers is user frustration with vendors that have been promising for years to take the grunt work out of managing multivendor enterprise networks.

''Even though individual point products are getting better, overall solutions are lacking,'' says John McConnell, president of McConnell Consulting in Boulder, Colo.

David Rosen, a systems consultant at Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. agrees.

''We're breaking up the [enterprise management] problem into workable chunks, like software distribution, server management and router management,'' he says. ''We have a number of tools, but no one tool does the job and there's a lot of overlap.''

To solve their problems, customers are not pinning their hopes on ambitious systems and network management frameworks such as the Tivoli Management Environment (TME) from IBM's Tivoli Systems, Inc. Even fewer survey participants than last year - 19.5% vs. 22% - say they are buying in to the framework concept in any fashion.

This is particularly significant given that, according to survey figures, managers need the automation, integration and scalability frameworks are designed to provide now more than ever.

When respondents were asked to rate the importance of various factors in increasing satisfaction with their management systems, automation-related items took three of the top five spots.

''Users want a management tool to start responding automatically to situations when they're detected,'' McConnell says. ''When a [Remote Monitoring] agent finds your utilization went up, you want something to take action to fix it, rather than turn an icon red and make you figure out what to do.''

Similarly, scalability came in at 4.03 out of a possible 5 in terms of importance, while integration of network and systems management data rated 3.85.

Driving this need is a big rise in the number of systems respondents are managing. In 1996, respondents reported managing an average of 21 servers and 225 desktops. This year, the numbers grew to 73 servers and 1,200 desktops.

Users clearly believe current products still don't have the wherewithal to manage such installations. Current automation capabilities got a satisfaction rating of 3.1 on a scale of 1 to 5 in this year's survey, down from 3.57 last year. Satisfaction with integration was down to 3.1 from 3.55 last year.

In addition, functional areas such as accounting, asset management, backup and configuration management, took an almost across-the-board drop compared with last year (see chart). The only exception to the general downtrend was security tools, which took a miniscule hike from 3.26 to 3.4.

Another major target for users' ire was application management. Last year, survey respondents gave application management systems a 3.9 satisfaction rating on the 1 to 5 scale. This year, the score sank to 3.2, and optimization of application performance plummeted from 3.5 to 2.9.

Here, again, user discontent seemed to center on the inability of tools to provide the big picture. Users want tools to pinpoint, as one user said, which application is hogging network bandwidth or whether a response time problem lies in the server, the application or a particular network segment.

The problem with platforms

More than any other type of solution, IT departments are looking to fill their network and systems management needs with SNMP-based management platforms such as Hewlett-Packard Co.'s OpenView, Sun Microsystems, Inc.'s Solstice and Cabletron Systems Inc.'s Spectrum, McConnell says.

Survey figures back this up. This year, 48% of survey respondents said they are using SNMP-based platforms as network and systems management foundations - up from 35% last year.

Such platforms, along with object-oriented offerings such as Tivoli's TME 10 and Computer Associates International, Inc.'s (CA) Unicenter, are said to provide much of what users are demanding. Those demands include automated response to alerts; correlation of system and network alerts to pinpoint problems; automated software distribution across multivendor client systems; and integration of third-party management tools and applications.

Why, then, the big drop in ratings? One likely cause is user perception that the integration provided by such platforms is still neither as broad nor as deep as they would like, particularly when - as is generally the case - a customer refuses to stay within the bounds of the vendors' management applications.

Vendors don't deny this. ''The problem is customers usually have something [else] already - LANdesk, [Systems Management Server], OpenView,'' says Martin Neath, vice president of product development at Tivoli. ''If you're starting from scratch with TME, you get comprehensive management coverage that runs across 27 [client and server] platforms.''

The fact is corporate network and systems management implementations remain largely fragmented. While 32.5% of the respondents said they are managing everything as an integrated entity, 43.5% are managing various components separately using element managers. Another 22% are managing networks with one set of tools and systems with another.

Furthermore, only 2.5% of the survey respondents said they are planning to implement a platform such as TME or CA's Unicenter as a ''monolithic'' one-vendor solution. Another 17% said they're looking to the frameworks to integrate multiple ''best-of-breed'' products.

Steve Laperuta, a network developer at Office Depot, Inc., illustrates the problem. ''IBM claims NetView/6000 [now known as TME 10 NetView] manages multivendor clients and servers, but it doesn't manage all our platforms,'' he says. The Delray Beach, Fla., office supplies chain is evaluating Microsoft Corp.'s SMS as a way to automate a corporatewide roll out of Windows NT.

While SNMP-based platforms such as TME 10 NetView can download software to and collect basic alerts and configuration data from NT using standards such as the Desktop Management Interface, users said SMS provides far more sophisticated capabilities, particularly for Microsoft systems.

Office Depot, for example, is checking out SMS' ability to centrally and automatically configure systems, track assets and distribute software in its large, distributed NT installation. ''We don't want to have to visit every desktop if we can avoid it,'' says another Office Depot systems manager, who requested anonymity.

Like many other survey participants, however, Office Depot found that a sophisticated capability such as automation comes at a price. ''The procedures involved in developing the automated scripts [with SMS] are pretty involved,'' the systems manager says.

Furthermore, he says SMS can't monitor configurations in real time or incipient problems such as CPU overload. Office Depot is now exploring the possibility of tying SMS in with Compaq Computer Corp.'s Insight Manager, which does support real-time systems management. The two systems ''do have some interoperability,'' if only on the screen level, the manager says. ''So you can fire off Insight Manager from SMS and vice versa.''

Integration still illusive

The group's IT department is now evaluating Remedy Corp.'s Action Request System help desk system, Connors says. The challenge will be integrating help desk operations with legacy network and systems management applications, potentially using OpenView as the integration point. The goal is to provide help desk people with a single system console from which they can view system and network activity.

''They also should be able to just push buttons to do bypasses, remedy situations or activate alternate routing,'' Connors says.

That's a key point: Alaska Air and other users made it clear that simply having access to multiple management systems from a single console or being able to launch one management tool from the screen of another is not enough. They want a deeper level of integration that involves correlation of alarms coming from various management systems, so console operators don't have to troubleshoot problems on their own. This is far from a new problem, of course, but the survey indicates users don't consider it adequately solved.

''To me, the biggest [integration] issue is the lack of a common database'' that would enable different management systems to share management information, says Mark Kraus, a network analyst at a financial services company he declined to name. ''There's a lot of issues associated with information redundancy.'' Kraus' firm is now struggling to integrate HP's OpenView with several element managers, including Cisco Systems, Inc.'s Ciscoworks and Bay Networks, Inc.'s Optivity.

It's not as if management vendors haven't heard about these issues. All of the major management platform vendors have been aggressively extending their systems to third-party applications and tools - and even to rival platforms.

Tivoli, for example, has produced integration modules that enable the TME console to interact with TME NetView, SunNet Manager, OpenView and Cabletron's Spectrum, Neath says. And since their merger, IBM and Tivoli have been working for a much deeper level of integration. There are also a number of partnerships, such as Tivoli's recently announced deal with Intel Corp. to integrate TME with LANdesk.

In addition, enterprise management platform vendors such as Tivoli, Cabletron, HP and CA have come up with ''de facto'' APIs and specifications to facilitate integration into their environments.

Tivoli's 10Plus Association, for example, consists of groups of independent software vendors and partners working on common APIs and object definitions for ''specific management disciplines, like backup and archive, help desk and database management,'' Neath says. The fruit of one such group is the Application Management Specification (AMS), which defines a common data model, managed objects and functions such as installation and configuration. An AMS Builder helps third parties and corporate programmers integrate application components into TME so it can manage any supported system or device.

Learning curve

One reason may be simple ignorance: Several managers who noted the lack of products providing anything more than screen-level integration also admitted they were just getting around to evaluating products such as TME. Companies such as Alaska Air are still evaluating TME as a possible solution among many.

Furthermore, many users have been repeatedly disappointed by vendors that refuse to coalesce around promising standards that would provide fuller integration, says David Spinelli, manager for Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group's global network service line. In particular, the industry needs to agree on a common management data repository structure and managed object definitions that would allow information sharing and correlation across different applications, he says.

The Desktop Management Task Force is expected this month to release its Common Information Model, the industry's latest shot at standard definitions in these areas. However, users and analysts have seen too many similar efforts fail to be optimistic (see sidebar).

On the other hand, Spinelli says vendors shouldn't shoulder all the blame for the lack of successful framework implementations or enterprisewide integrated management solutions. The problem also lies with IT departments, which he says often underestimate the level of commitment required to successfully implement an enterprise management system.

''When push comes to shove, users are not willing to pay for what we refer to as the development of the people and [business] processes that are applied to the technology,'' Spinelli says ''They buy the point solutions like software distribution, but they don't have the blueprint to implement them [across the enterprise]. ''Buying a hammer and nails doesn't mean you can build a house.''

Indeed, Tivoli's Neath says designing and implementing a TME system to manage just one major enterprise application - such as Notes or SAP R/3 running across thousands of servers - takes between 120 and 180 days and requires two or three full-time in-house people and one to three consultants from Tivoli.

Furthermore, building a corporatewide management system requires the same level of planning as an enterprisewide software reengineering effort, Spinelli says. ''According to Gartner Group, 75% of distributed systems management projects fail because there is no plan, no goals or poorly defined objectives,'' he notes.

When Spinelli's group helps a client set up such a framework, ''we typically tell them that 25% of a project's budget is capital outlay, while 75% is project management, process development and change management,'' he says.

Then there is the difficulty of getting the movers and shakers from the relevant IT groups to commit to the project. ''A TME implementation is successful if IT buys into it as a whole, not if only server administrators use it,'' Spinelli says. A successful enterprise management system ''needs information and integration across the security, network management, systems management, desktop management and help desk functions.''

A significant number of companies are just starting to put their enterprise systems management strategy together.

For example, Connors admits that Alaska Air IT managers ''don't use OpenView as well as we should.''

''We have to learn how to use it to deal proactively with problems, [and] we're just starting to look at PC configuration,'' he says.

Rather than waiting for vendors to come up with more integrated management tools, others have decided to move the mountain to Muhammad: They're simplifying their environments to ease the integration problem.

Metropolitan Life, for example, is coming up with standard configurations for its 10,000-plus workstations, Rosen says. ''Then we can start to automate software downloads and updates with something like TME. But without those standard device configurations, we can't manage this problem.''