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Finding the suite spot

Dividing line between frameworks and point products is blurring.

By Denise Dubie
Network World, 03/18/02

One of the first things Larry Zimmerman did when he started work as network administrator for Clarian Health in Indianapolis was shut down three servers running Hewlett-Packard's OpenView Network Node Manager software. Instead, he loaded one server with Concord Communication's eHealth suite of network- and performance-management products.

"I liked the product because it was more user friendly. With OpenView, I had a lot of problems getting the [management information bases] to work, and the software generated a lot of false alarms," Zimmerman says. And in fairness to HP OpenView, Zimmerman says he's on his own managing 10,000 devices, so he simply doesn't have time to work out the kinks in the software. "Concord was pretty much out of the box. In about three to four days, [eHealth] was polling every device, receiving traps and giving me reports."

The reporting features in eHealth were a major draw to Zimmerman, as more and more members of upper management asked to see reports on how the network performed in relation to their department. Concord's product offers several standard reports and lets users customize reports.

And fortunately for Concord, more recent revisions of eHealth now can receive traps, as most network-management software packages do.

Head-to-head competition between HP and Concord may not have happened a few years ago. More likely, the two companies would have complemented the other's product, with HP customers looking to Concord for a performance management add-on, and Concord customers tying the point product into HP's network management platform.

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But with the big enterprise framework vendors scaling down their software and point product companies working to offer customers more, the line between framework and point products has begun to blur. Factor in the slumping economy and no vendors can rest on their laurels.

"The playing field has leveled to a degree. Everyone is selling the same [return on investment] pitch now," says Jasmine Noel, an analyst with Hurwitz Group. "People are trying to get more and more business value out of their networks now."

Noel says the drive for ROI has many network management vendors including ROI calculators or quick evaluations of network performance to show users how their products will quickly deliver results. "The blurring trends has net management becoming business management. Network management and security management are also being tied more closely together."

Noel says the network management arena is now a buyer's market. "Vendors want to show potential customers how they will help them save money and in some cases make money with their software," she says.

Framework vendors change course

After years of complaints about poor customer satisfaction, high prices and lengthy deployment processes, framework vendors - Computer Associates, Aprisma Management Technologies, IBM's Tivoli Systems subsidiary and HP - now want to show the fast and easy results users will get when signing on with them.

Last year CA announced a modular version of its flagship Unicenter offering, which the company says will lower a customer's cost of entry and deployment time. In essence, instead of network managers purchasing everything but the kitchen sink with CA - and paying a lot for it, while waiting several months to see if it works - customers can buy just the software parts they want.

Aprisma, the network management software arm of the now-defunct Cabletron, decided to break its Spectrum offering into three versions for large corporations, midsize companies and service providers.

"Right now customers don't want, or need, all that a framework has to offer. And they don't have the time to wait for results," says Paul Bugala, an analyst with IDC. "IT people have to justify their budgets and if a product can't prove it's worth quickly, they're not going to buy it."

And on the other side of the line, the point product vendors, such as Micromuse, Tavve, Chevin, Lucent (with its VitalSuite product) and Concord, to name a few, want to prove that they can do more than one thing well. For example, companies, such as Concord and Micromuse, used to sell just one product. But after spending some cash on research and development, and acquisitions, they now offer suites of software that combine network, performance and systems management, and integrate out of the box.

"Tight integration between their products is a big thing the frameworks already have that users want," Noel says. And as the smaller companies work to add more capabilities to their products, some of the large companies, such as CA, focus on partnerships to ensure their software will integrate with the latest and greatest point offerings.

But customers aren't necessarily concerned with all the politics, or semantics, of a framework offering vs. a point product. Basically, users just want to buy a product that will better manage their networks and they want a quick ROI.

Keith Johnson, superintendent of education, IT for the Halton District School Board in Ontario, Canada, says vendor reputation didn't play much of a part in his decision to roll out CA's Unicenter TNG two years ago. He had heard the stories of how difficult it could be to set up Unicenter TNG, but decided to test the product anyway. Partly because Johnson's staff of 12 is responsible for 10,000 devices, 87 disparate sites and upwards of 50,000 users, he says scalability topped his shopping list and frameworks have a reputation for being able to scale.

"We needed a truly enterprise solution - something we could install on as many desktops as we needed now and in the future," Johnson says. CA's Unicenter proved scalable enough for his network and also provided the remote management and centralized console Johnson wanted. CA offered a price that suited his tight IT budget, and more importantly, the company offered support and maintenance that Johnson says is essential to his network.

"In many cases, in classrooms, we have multiple users on one computer. These are not dedicated machines and more problems tend to crop up," he says. "The way I look at it is buying a car is easy: Sure there are upfront costs, but supporting a car on an ongoing basis can cost you more if you don't do it properly."

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