* Application vendors wake up to the importance of management
I’ve written about how management is becoming a differentiator for hardware vendors, as they build in and bundle management capabilities. The same thing is happening in software. In particular, application vendors are developing approaches that make their software easier to manage, easier to support or more stable.
I’ve written about how management is becoming a differentiator for hardware vendors, as they build in and bundle management capabilities. The same thing is happening in software. In particular, application vendors are developing approaches that make their software easier to manage, easier to support or more stable.
Application vendors have much to gain by developing more manageable applications, rather than “black box” applications. While in the past management vendors have developed special modules for managing some of the more prolific application software packages, these approaches have been narrowly focused. As application vendors begin to realize that making their applications more manageable differentiates them from competitors, embedding management capabilities in the application offerings will increase.
An example of this is the recently announced partnership of Siebel and Motive. Siebel intends to embed Motive’s configuration management capabilities to provide built-in management for Siebel environments. PeopleSoft and BEA have a similar partnership. These are interesting partnerships because until now, most management initiatives between management vendors and application vendors had been focused on performance and availability.
The embedding of configuration management in an application extends the reach of management into a realm that has been largely in the control of the application vendors. Application-specific configuration management could easily lead to the development of configuration best practices and the ability to track and manage the application-related configuration settings throughout the environment. In addition, the availability of configuration information is extremely useful for administrators who are working to solve user problems with the application. Motive’s snapshot capability will allow support personnel to see what’s changed in the environment, for example.
Another example of application vendors working with management vendors and taking a major role in the management of their products is the recently announced integration of IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Transaction Performance (TMTP) with Siebel 7.7. IBM and Siebel worked together to instrument Siebel 7.7 to better identify performance issues. The Siebel-specific instrumentation allows the gathering of application-specific information – for example, the normal response times for each component of a transaction. TMTP can then take that information and let administrators know when transaction steps are taking longer than expected.
Although instrumentation of applications has been in existence for quite a while, many applications have not been instrumented because of the effort that is involved. So many have taken the horizontal approach to application management, where more all-purpose tools are used to manage applications. But although the effort is higher to instrument applications, there is much value in built-in management that can provide highly application-specific information and management.
So if instrumentation has been around for a while, why are we suddenly seeing this happen? I believe that it’s the current emphasis on tying the business to IT that is putting pressure on application vendors to deliver applications that are better managed and more easily managed. If an application is business-critical, you simply have to have a higher level of visibility into the application. The horizontal application management software helps, but it can’t provide the depth of visibility and knowledge that application-specific approaches can.
I applaud the initiatives of application vendors that are more deeply involving themselves in the management of their applications because they obviously know their applications the best. They know where the critical performance levers are in the application, as well as the recommended application configuration settings. This provides the ideal situation in which management is practiced within the context of the application.
If you’re shopping for application software today, manageability of the application should be on your checklist of requirements. Choosing the best application functionality for your company is very important, but also remember that you still have to manage the beast once you’ve taken it home. It’s always much easier managing a beast with a leash (management) than one without it.
