* Oculan provides monitoring of small and midsize nets
One of the most fertile areas for independent software vendors in the Microsoft world is providing cross-platform services. While Microsoft would like to believe that its customers run 100% Windows-based networks (and Redmond often tries to convince both you and me of that), the reality is that few networks of any size are homogenized. While Windows may dominate on your users’ desktops, your server room could probably qualify as a multi-cultural center.
Time and again, Microsoft has shown no interest in connecting Windows platforms to non-Microsoft platforms. At best, it will offer lukewarm support to shared standards, such as the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), without providing tools to use the standard in any meaningful way across the full panoply of operating systems. That is, unless your panoply is limited to servers with “Windows” in their name: Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, etc.
While users and curmudgeons like myself, might decry this state of affairs, people like Robert Davis think it’s a wonderful philosophy for Bill Gates and Co., to have. Davis, you see, is the CEO of Oculan.
Oculan provides “plug-n-play” network management solutions, primarily for Windows networks. Its “little purple box” called Oculan 250 simply plugs into the network and runs. As Network World reported in an extensive review (link below): “… the idea of getting a monitoring tool pre-installed on a keyboardless, rack-mountable computer is intriguing and compelling, especially for small networks with few spare computers.” Now Oculan has gone a step farther.
The latest release of Oculan’s software, Version 5.0 is developed for the 250 and its little brother, the Oculan 100 and supports Windows servers and desktops of course. But the same platform can now manage and secure Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange, Active Directory, and Terminal Server, as well as other platforms like Unix, Linux and AS400 servers.
While the Oculan servers are aimed at small and midsize networks (the 250 can handle 25 network devices, 25 servers, and 250 desktops), these are precisely the nets that need a comprehensive monitoring package. By adding support for many of the platforms and services that might be found on such networks, Oculan is poised and positioned to take full control of a segment of the smaller, heterogeneous network that Microsoft appears to be ignoring.
The Oculan 100 and 250 are neat little products, ones that are even more useful now with the new 5.0 software. As an added fillip (for those of you who appreciate irony) the Oculan boxes – which are used, after all, to manage Windows networks – run on Red Hat Linux.
