NetVision enhances NetWare monitoring

One of the more interesting announcements made at the recent BrainShare conference didn’t come from Novell, but from another Utah company that’s based down the road in Orem. NetVision, founded almost 10 years ago by refugees from Provo who developed NDS but weren’t sure about the direction Novell was taking it, unveiled a product to complement both your NetWare and corporate network monitoring tools – provided those tools’ names begin with “Patrol.”

BMC Software is the powerhouse (well, IBM’s Tivoli might disagree, but most people wouldn’t) in network management and monitoring. Its widely-deployed Patrol software has been architected and orchestrated with modules for just about every OS (OS/390, AS/400, Windows Servers, OpenVMS, Linux and Unix), database system (Oracle, Informix, Sybase, DB2), enterprise application (PeopleSoft, SAP), eBusiness platform (WebSphere, Weblogic), and a host of hardware platforms (Dell, Compaq, HP, Sun, Cisco, and on and on). It even offers integration modules for competitors HP/Openview and Tivoli!

There is, of course, a Patrol for NetWare module, which helps monitor, manage and optimize NetWare server performance. BMC claims that, “System administrators unfamiliar with NetWare can quickly cross-leverage their existing skills into a new environment.” Sounds dubious to me, but the new offering from NetVision can change that.

NetVision knows NetWare, I know that and even Novell knows that (see: https://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/netware/2003/0127nw1.html) since Novell resells the Orem company’s DirectoryAlert and ServerAlert products. Now NetVision wants to make Patrol for NetWare more effective, so it has released eDirectory Policy Manager Knowledge Module (KM) for Patrol (quite a mouthful, we’ll call it “the KM”).

The KM provides real-time security that compares event information collected from the directory, the NetWare file system, and the operating system against predefined policies. This allows you to not only to audit access control, but to track user behavior as well.  Automated responses are then triggered to reverse, and consequently repair, actions that violate security policies.  All of this can occur without administrator involvement. So you can leave the office once in a while.

There’s no need for you to buy Patrol to implement this, though. NetVision’s Integrated Security Policy Management suite will do all that and more. But for the 80% of the Fortune 1000 who use both Patrol and NetWare, the benefit of being able to control and manage NetWare services from the same console as other enterprise platforms is very desirable. If you fit into that category, then eDirectory Policy Manager Knowledge Module for Patrol isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.