Management software makers promise enterprise IT streamlined operations, but the more the market consolidates the less likely one vendor will be able to offer interoperable tools - unless they take on the hard work of integration now.

The management software market has been consolidating for a few years now, with more vendors buying others and combining capabilities. Both the advantage and disadvantage for enterprise IT customers is that once-disparate products will now be available from one vendor. The advantage lies in fewer vendors to deal with and the disadvantage remains the same: lack of integration. Most customers realize that acquisitions and vendor consolidation doesn't necessarily mean that the products they used to buy from two or more vendors will now interoperate seamlessly from one vendor. In some cases, software developed organically and distributed by one vendor doesn't always integrate smoothly.

That's why, industry watchers say, management vendors will be making big news around integration and interoperability efforts. For instance, CA recently announced updates to its management software portfolio -- which now includes Data Center Automation Manager -- that worked to integrate existing products together.

"You'll see the word integration a lot in CA's network management announcements, because that is where most of the customer value comes from these days," says Jasmine Noel, co-founder and principal analyst with Ptak, Noel & Associates. "Network administrators really can't manage availability and performance without good change control as well. Yet the capabilities that do fault, performance and change are different -- hence the different products -- where NOCs feel the pain is when those capabilities, and the admins that use them, are siloed and walled off from each other."

CA isn't the only management software maker that realized it needs to do the integration work for customers. NetScout also recently made news with updated products that deliver on the vendor's promise to fully integrate its nGenius technology with tools it acquired with Network General. The company this month released an updated version of nGenius Performance Manager to incorporate Network General's packet analyst and data mining capabilities, the vendor says.

Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.