* 2007 will be the year Microsoft gets into the professional management game
Just as the world of professional basketball eagerly anticipates the arrival of Ohio State’s Greg Oden and the University of Texas’ Kevin Durant, IT industry watchers have long awaited Microsoft’s full-blown entry into the systems management market. The wait is over.
In its own little version of March Madness, Microsoft last week at its annual Management Summit laid out its plans to become a major management player going forward. Don’t get me wrong. Microsoft has long been talking about its management plans.
For instance, it announced its Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) in 2003, but it seems 2007 will be the year Microsoft comes off the bench and gets into the professional management game.
To start, Microsoft is shipping System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 (formerly Microsoft Operations Manager). The software was developed in part via an OEM deal with EMC (for their SMARTS network management technology) and will kick of a slew of management product releases from Microsoft in the next year.
On top of that, Microsoft is leading the way in the development of a management standard based on its technology. Service Modeling Language, or SML, is based on Microsoft’s proprietary Systems Definition Model (SDM) 3.0 specification and is now with the World Wide Web Consortium for standardization. Microsoft says SML support will be integrated into every management tool in its Microsoft System Center brand
Do I dare to dream? Could more players enter this market that seems to get mired down with too much technology as it is?
For far too many years, I have rattled off (and always in alphabetical order) the big four management vendors — BMC, CA, HP and IBM — as though I was back in second grade reciting The Pledge of Allegiance. But this year and last Microsoft, along with its sometimes partner Cisco, have given me reason to mix up my staid list.
Let me clarify. There are numerous players in the management market that are more than worth mentioning. When I ask could there be more players to mention, I mean players with the depth and breadth of technologies to provide IT shops with large integrated software suites and not niche products to address a specific pain point.
Management vendors would argue vendors such as Microsoft have a vested interest in specific systems over others, being the Windows operating system giant it is. That could make Microsoft management products unfit to manage large heterogeneous environments. But don’t HP and IBM deliver servers, yet still maintain their management wares are agnostic enough to manage the competition?
