Entevo Corp.'s new DirectManage software lets NT managers create a unified picture of all NT resources - domains, directories, users and files - on their networks.
The software, which ships this month, uses the Microsoft Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI), which lets third-party tools access the Active Directory that is a key part of the upcoming NT 5.0 release. In effect, DirectManage creates the illusion of a directory hierarchy using information from existing NT 3.51 and NT 4.0 domains as well as the separate Microsoft Exchange directory.
"DirectManage lets you consolidate all the NT domain information in to one place," said Rick Villars, director of network software research at International Data Corp., the Framingham, Mass. technology market research firm. "Longer term, it's the first product that I've seen that takes this to the next step - a framework to start building an enterprise directory, even before Active Directory is released."
DirectManage has two parts. DirectAdmin is a graphical interface, or console, and a set of management tools for NT managers. The second part, DirectScript, is a collection of eight Component Object Model (COM) objects, each of which can handle a specific task, such as user management, file system security and so on. Administrators can write a short script, in any of several languages, that uses these objects to automate some management task on more than one server.
DirectManage 1.0 is priced at $19 per managed user account, with volume discounts available.
