When the network at Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut went from supporting 200 to 1,500 end users, CIO Jim Olson needed a way to keep managing it without spending any more money.

The most obvious route would have been trying to squeeze more out of the company's 3-year-old Computer Associates Unicenter TNG framework, but the hospital instead took a more drastic course. It tore out a Unicenter system initially installed to manage more of a mainframe- and minicomputer-oriented network and replaced it with SilverBack Technologies' Infocare, which was more suited to handle the hospital's increasingly distributed, server-based environment.

Sure, the hospital had to shell out $40,000 for Infocare, but it also got to ditch $60,000 in annual Unicenter maintenance and support fees, resulting in an immediate savings of 33%.

The decision whether to keep or dump a management system is complicated, especially if the system has been highly customized or features agents distributed across hundreds or even thousands of devices. What's more, it's not easy to justify elimination of software that might have cost $500,000 or more. But network executives and industry watchers agree that replacing a management system shouldn't be overlooked as a way to reduce costs, optimize network performance and lessen the load for tight network/IT staffs.

"Some users simply outgrow their management products, and some tools never get completely implemented," says Dennis Drogseth, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates. "But unlike in the past when tools' shortcomings may have been accepted or forgotten, network managers are now considering removing and replacing management software as a cost-cutting measure."

Olson is quick to point out that the hospital's network - which expanded from a pair of mainframes to six minicomputers and then 37 Compaq ProLiant servers - didn't outgrow Unicenter's capabilities. However, the hospital was finding it more difficult to operate Unicenter without additional training - training it could not afford.

"As we moved from mainframe to client/server, we upgraded Unicenter, but even with the effort we made to use it, we became more and more dissatisfied with the product," Olson says. "The Infocare functionality is not as rich as Unicenter, but for the small, financially strapped organization, it is an option."