Web-based mgmt tools delayed

Waiting for WBEM? Don't hold your breath. It will be another year before products compliant with Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM) specifications hit the market, according to vendors that founded the initiative 15 months ago. The principal reason for the delay: WBEM products are largely dependent on the release of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT 5.0, which is not expected to ship until mid-1998 at the earliest.

WBEM was announced in the summer of 1996 as a joint effort backed by BMC Software, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Compaq Computer Corp., Intel Corp. and Microsoft and quickly garnered the support of about 70 other vendors.

WBEM defines a standard way to manage enterprise network resources using Web-based and other Internet technologies. Supporting vendors expect WBEM to generate a new breed of tools for reducing the cost and simplifying the task of enterprise network management.

Though a slew of Web-based management products have emerged since WBEM was an-nounced, they offer little more than browser-based graphical user interfaces.

WBEM is supposed to go beyond this by providing a common data modeling environment that allows management applications to easily share data, something existing management platforms have failed to deliver.

But at the time WBEM was announced, vendors said products adhering to the specifications would ship by the end of this year (NW, July 22, 1996, page 1). And that is just not going to happen.

WBEM products will "roll out with support for NT 5.0," said Wayne Morris, director of corporate strategy at BMC. "It's gaited by Microsoft."

That would make sense, since WBEM is viewed as a Microsoft-led initiative, despite its founding by five vendors and the fact it is expected to be operating-system independent like other Internet technologies. Microsoft concurred that WBEM products will roll out next year with the release of Windows 98, which is expected in the second quarter of 1998, as well as with Windows NT 5.0. The key, however, is NT 5.0 because it runs on servers, which is where "back-end" WBEM data-modeling services will reside.

Despite the lag, Microsoft maintains that WBEM is moving along at a faster clip than other standards efforts have in the past, such as the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).

"We're really delighted with the speed with which the [Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF)] has set to the task of building the core component [of WBEM] and standardizing it," said Michael Emanuel, product manager for Microsoft's Systems Management Server.

The core component of WBEM is the Common Information Model (CIM), formerly known as the HyperMedia Management Schema (HMMS). CIM is the WBEM data model that defines how managed objects should be represented through a Web browser. The HMMS/CIM work was submitted to DMTF shortly after the WBEM initiative was announced.

Slow going for HMMP

Another WBEM component, the HyperMedia Management Protocol (HMMP), was given to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for further de- finition and standardization. HMMP is an HTTP-based protocol for communicating between management services, applications and agents.

The IETF hasn't done much with HMMP, though.

"The IETF has no activity related to WBEM and none is anticipated," said Michael O'Dell, chief technology officer for UUNET Technologies, and an IETF area director for operations and management.

"The focus has changed" with regard to HMMP, said Bob Meinschein, engineering manager for management technologies in Intel's platform archi- tecture labs. "Defining a new protocol has proven troublesome, and it's going to take a long time to actually get it adopted in the market."

The new focus is on defining a way to make WBEM object requests protocol independent, Meinschein said.

Despite the drift away from HMMP, the WBEM product delays and the outcome of previous industry efforts - such as the Open Software Foundation's ill-fated Distributed Management Environment and the Management Integration Consortium - some see WBEM as perhaps the last best chance to finally achieve industry standard interoperable enterprise management.

"If this one doesn't succeed, we're going to run into some significant problems, which is going to slow down everybody's growth," said Stephen DeWitt, vice president and general manager of Cisco's network management business.

But others say the impact won't be that dramatic. Buyers want to know that network devices and applications have been tested, quality assured and work, said Joe Clabby, research director at Aberdeen Group, Inc., a consultancy in Boston. "But can I can get by without WBEM? Certainly," he said.