End-to-end service management

A recent announcement by Hewlett-Packard underscores the rising importance of end-to-end service management as compared to the more traditional component-by-component device management.

Earlier this month, HP announced a number of new and enhanced products in its OpenView line.

Included in this announcement was OpenView IT Services Manager, a series of management modules that incorporate help-desk technology the company acquired in its purchase of developer Prolin. Those modules will be integrated with HP's two core management products: OpenView IT/Operations and Network Node Manager. Also introduced was OpenView MeasureWare Service Reporter, a Web-based console that provides reports on the performance of service-level agreements. Other products for service, backup and asset management were also announced, along with a new line of NetMetrix probes. All products, with the exception of the new NetMetrix probes, will be available within the next quarter. The new probe products are expected to be available during the summer.

Until now, the OpenView product family had been oriented more toward network product-specific configuration, as well as fault and performance management functionality, than toward support for end-to-end service-level management.

By contrast, the HP NetMetrix product family, including the MeasureWare software agent products, were quite advanced in their ability to provide a more complete level of network application performance monitoring. In this announcement, HP has finally recognized the importance of service-level management; it combined new product announcements from both the OpenView and NetMetrix groups into a single major rollout. Users who have made major investments in OpenView products should find this announcement particularly encouraging, given rising industry concerns about the long-term viability of OpenView technology and products.