* Good management products for small businesses can be elusive
Most management software has been focused on companies with more than 3,000 employees, even though the vast majority of companies have fewer than that number. If you’re part of that majority, you may feel you have two choices – outsource, or try to fit into the costly clothes of an older sibling that are cumbersome at best.
The good news is that Enterprise Management Associates is seeing some progress and innovation here, albeit along fragmented lines. In the rest of this column, I’m going to delineate some approaches to easing your pain, and I’m anxious to see what your own reactions and priorities are. Which approach or approaches have worked best for you?
Here goes:
* Element management tool sets for a specific device or brand. In the network area, this would be management software specific to Cisco, or Nortel, or Juniper, for instance.
* Low-end products or components packaged from one of the very large enterprise management vendors, such as HP, IBM, CA or BMC.
* Desktop software – such as Microsoft SMS, LANDesk, or European Criston Software – to distribute software to desktops and provide inventory and sometimes license-metering capabilities.
* Security software – such as McAfee or Norton Utilities, which are very niche products but nonetheless very pervasive management components among small and midsized businesses (SMB).
* Wireless – an area of innovation with very little real in the SMB area, but one that EMA expects will become increasingly important. In the security area, for instance, SonicWall has introduced some wireless capability for SMBs.
* Mid-tier products that are functionally rich but compact and not too costly, such as Fidelia, which includes a reasonably rich mix of fault, performance and service-level management.
* Primarily network or SNMP-based management – and here the dominant brand is clearly Ipswitch – where the product is focused and compact, but typically requires some IT expertise.
* Products for the small businessman that really don’t require IT expertise. While logically apparent, EMA has seen little success here – Oculan being the most recent casualty – probably because of the need for big advertising dollars to reach out to a more diverse buyer population. One new utility approach, Mutiny – coming out of Manchester, U.K. – fits somewhere between this category and the one above.
* Outsourced services from managed service providers, value-added resellers and others.
You might be taking several of these approaches. And you might also point out categories relevant to SMBs that I haven’t listed – which would be great. I’d love to hear them. But the fact is that your choices right now are generally limited by this somewhat illogical list of options, and if you’re trying to piece some of these together, don’t feel that you’re alone. EMA would love to hear your opinions. Write me at mailto:drogseth@emausa.com
