What's behind the recent wave of mergers in network management?
 
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Each of these acquisitions is significant and strategic, and certain common elements stand out beyond the fact that they are all signs of consolidation within the network management market, and the management marketplace in general. Each of the acquiring vendors has been an innovator and actually helped to define a market. This is true of Concord in the area of reporting and Micromuse in the areas of service-level and fault management. Visual Networks has become a dominant brand in WAN management, and Compuware, with products such as EcoScope, has a leadership position in application performance and availability management across the network.
To each of these vendors, a meaningful contributor has been added. Empire Technologies takes Concord further into the systems and application management arena. Calvin Alexander will help to consolidate Micromuse's problem management by adding physical topology for root cause analysis. Inverse will bring Visual Networks a more complete solution in WAN services monitoring and reporting by extending Visual's strength in network connectivity to Internet-based application response time. And Compuware's acquisition of CACI builds on an already existent integration with its Ecosystems product set to further automate the dynamics between real-time application behavior and capacity planning.
These acquisitions are noteworthy movements in an industry already swirling with change. Are they attempts at product differentiation - a way of standing out further above the crowd? To some degree, yes. What about market consolidation - shoring up existing strengths for more complete solutions within existing markets? This is somewhat true of all the acquisitions, although primarily in the case of Micromuse's acquisition of CAN. But it's nowhere near the whole story there, either. What about an attempt to reach new markets? Again, this is a partly true in all cases, but far from the whole story.
One way to get a common view of these changes is to step back and look at all the product sets, on both sides of the acquisition equation, at a higher level of abstraction. It wouldn't be stretching the point to say all of these solutions are directed at helping to automate decision making for the delivery of IT-centric business services. By coming together into a larger, critical mass, the synergies across what had been more bucketized decision making can mature into more integrated sets of tasks.
Concord has made several announcements targeted at the integration of systems, application and network reporting. Visual Networks is similarly providing integrated WAN services management from both an application and a network perspective. Micromuse is extending its reach to provide improved levels of automation and insight in service-level and problem management. And Compuware has further united performance and availability management with capacity planning.
What's driving this trend to more automated, integrated decision-making? One could claim that it's the relative failure of most frameworks, which should have been built to provide just such a base to begin with. But something else is also afoot to help fuel and drive these requirements. This factor is clearly the most conspicuous place where revenue and automated IT control come together, so much so that it seems to be part of the answer to everything these days. It's the most visible drive in at least three of these announcements, Micromuse being the possible exception, and you guessed it - it begins with an "e-."
Dennis Drogseth is a director with Enterprise Management Associates,(www.enterprisemanagement.com), a leading analyst and market research firm based in Boulder, Colorado, focusing exclusively on all aspects of enterprise management. Dennis has extensive experience in network management platforms and products and is researching trends in management software and changing IT roles internationally. His 18-plus years of experience in high-tech includes positions at IBM and Cabletron. He has been quoted in the press and is a speaker at industry events. He can be reached at drogseth@enterprisemanagement.com.
Concord Communication's Web site
Inverse Network Technologies Web site
Calvin Alexander Networking
Note: This site will soon be moving to the Micromuse site at: www.micromuse.com/
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