Tivoli Alternatives

• Cost of personnel. Important consideration of the system is the level of personnel involved. In most large enterprise environment best people should be doing something more productive then monitoring events. It is stupid and wasteful to assign your best personnel to monitoring just because it requres Prolog programming. That means that such system should not require a staff of PHDs to deploy and manage such system (which is, unfortunately, the case with TEC: few people with bachelor degree in computer science can understand Prolog). 
• Cost of support. Complex products were less bad idea when the money were easy and you can buy whenever level of support you wish. Truth be told major vendors compensate inferiority and overcomplexity of their products with an excellent technical support (and IBM Tivoli support is really very good and more worth the money then the products IBM sells). But when money are tight as they are in 2099 this is more of a liability.   this is connected with the cost of personnel issue above.
• Survivability. Complex product tend to die when the underling technology changes, while simpler product often manage to adapt. Just think about the cost of transition from classic Tivoli to a new product line in terms of both personnel retraining and licensing costs for a large multinational company with offices on all continents. The desire to shoot some IBM brass and increased sensitivity to competitor offerings in this situation is a very unsurprising reaction ;-)
• Rigid licensing models. First of all they are designed more to recover costs them to promote the product. Per node licensing which is typical for Tivoli is now under attack from more nimble open source competitors. As they are now can provide 80% of functionality for 30% of cost they start eating the lunch of IBM and other major ESM vendors. In this "race to the bottom" some compromises need to be made on the part of established players.
• Duplicate functionality. As return on the investment in IT became more central in selection of the product having products with by and large complementary features became less and less acceptable. For example Tivoli TWS provides probably 80% of monitoring functionality as scripts can be deployed and scheduled on any node for the central location. That means that cost of other components in enterprise package should strongly depend on overlap. That also means that good, interesting alternatives to Tivoli may appear under different labels.  Duplicate functionality between monitoring systems and enterprise job schedulers is just one example.
• Competition from open source world. Many companies want to start small without going in bed with one of the major vendors and grow gradually. Open source solutions provide this opportunity more readily then ESM big 4 vendors.

Another problem is that IBM hype. When IT is supporting a vital business service and problems occurs without ESM products there is no clear feedback for those in charge of those business services as for to why that has occurred. Businesses want both value and predictability from IT.  Traditional PR-staff  used by IBM such as 'five 9s availability' don't mean very much to an intelligent business manager.  He understands that this is a myth and he starts to distrust the company and its products.  

Another myth is the importance of "real time" correlation (Netcool advertisement campaign again IBM was actually based on this claim; paradoxically it actually worked pretty well for them for a long time).  First of all not all correlation is created equal: pre-filtering (duplicates removal, etc) can really be done with very high speeds. More complex correlation does not need tremendous speed. A dozen events per second is actually an adequate speed for pretty large enterprises. Moreover higher speed can be  a sign of deficient architecture (as in Netcool's single level correlation engine) and as such is more of a warning sign then an advantage. 

Proliferation of ESM systems signals a fundamental change in the way that the IT systems management function is structured in large enterprises and moves some level of monitoring inside OS (Suse 11 actually includes Nagios 3.0).  While traditionally systems have been managed along technology lines - with different groups for PCs, servers, networks, databases, ESM provides an opportunity to view them more along functional lines. For example, subset of systems serving to SAP/R3 usually includes both servers, networking equipment and PCs.  For business owner it does not matter whether the problem is with networking or with the server: all he sees is that order take too slow to enter and the system is sluggish.  and that created the question of integration of event streams from the appropriate subset of events and correlation between them The large systems management vendors certainly see the potential for additional revenue here. BMC Software, Mercury Interactive, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Computer Associates are all broadening their portfolios. But they do not use subsystems that vendors provide for free and thus they are adding to existing over-complexity of their products. 

From another point of view vertical integration means that the loop is not complete unless the helpdesk desk software is tied in, so that problems are managed, diagnosed, prioritized and later analyzed based of stored history to avoid reoccurrences. In this sense absence of strong links between Tivoli and helpdesk software is a problem for IBM that definitely can be exploited by competitors. 

This "overcomplexity trap" does provide a breezing space for smaller more nibble players, who can better utilize the recent advances both in hardware and technology and first of all scripting languages and HTTP protocol. Also it usually takes at least a decade for the technology to mature and that means that ESM systems are still pretty young (first ESM systems can into being around 1996). 

The goal to relate problem with end users to particular part of IT infrastructure as quickly as and as precisely as possible is still illusive and it is not easy to assign priorities to fixing those that directly impart performance. So for enterprise it is important to know were to stop and not to overpay for serives promote by suits who does not understand the technology they are pushing but undeststand very well the weakness of IT management ;-).

Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov

Old News ;-)

[Apr 12, 2009] Augur Systems Event Manager Compare Tivoli-Netcool

Netcool Relational Database

Netcool uses a (mostly) standard SQL database.  Netcool rules scripts update fields in this database.  Triggers and Impact policies also interact with this database.

Pro: Databases provide uniform access.  Netcool users can write Perl scripts to interact with the database (although this is unsupported).  You can extend the database schema to add your own fields for implementing complex rules.

Con: Database field sizes are limited, so data may be truncated.  Basic, intermediate, and advanced customizations require DB Admin skills.

Netcool Rule Scripts 

Netcool uses a script language to parse events for generating/clearing alerts in the Omnibus database.  A rule script is essentially a large if/then/else structure, with parsed variables.  Scripts can be broken into “include” files.  “Lookup” files for variable replacement are supported too.

Pro: Scripts are comfortable for experts to edit, and foster programatic tools like “m2r” (MIB to rules).  An IDE helps with syntax checking, etc.  There is a large library of existing rule scripts, although they may need customization for your needs.

Con: As the scripts get long, they can be difficult to maintain and debug.  Maintenance may require a full-time expert.  Rule sets may require additional fees.  Rule script files are difficult to delegate to multiple subject matter experts for administration.  Events that clear alerts may need to reference built-in or custom database fields (e.g. “class”), which can be difficult to document.  Lookups are limited to text files.

... ... ...

Netcool Administration 

Netcool is configured via a combination of files and GUIs.

Pro:File editing is comfortable for Unix admins. 

Con: Limited ability to delegate configuration duties. Changes may require ‘kill -HUP’ command line signals or restarts.  Limited support for multiple administrators or simultaneous editing.

[Apr 12, 2009] Augur

This is a Java based system.  Live DB is proprietary. See a good write-up of differences with Netcool in  Augur Systems Event Manager Compare Tivoli-Netcool

Event Management

Augur simultaneously collects and analyzes log entries, SNMP traps, application output, and proprietary protocols too.  The graphical rule engine processes events streams using your business rules, and then generates or clears root-cause alerts.

De-duplication, prioritization, and thresholding tools are all built in.  Plug-ins add data enrichment, external integrations, and any other customizations.

We tried to provide the flexibility of a “framework” system, with thoughtful features to make common tasks easier.  We think it’s a reasonable balance of power and ease.

Unified View

Alerts from all sources are automatically aggregated together and filtered according to your role-based configurations.  So you see just what you want, and your personnel see just what they need.

Workforce Dispatching

A full-featured paging notification system frees users from a screen so they can multi-task from anywhere.  The automation of workforce dispatching ensures consistent accountability, which ultimately benefits your service.  Fine-grained controls notify the right personnel based on alert type, location, schedule, and your business rules.

Enterprise-Class

In addition to Augur’s role-based access controls, its configuration is also secured by fine-grained permissions.  So you can safely share or delegate administration roles to trusted individuals or groups across your company.

When deployed as a distributed network, the cluster delivers the same views and configuration as if it were all one Augur, but with expandable capacity and the safety of network/geographic diversity.  The configuration database itself is a fault-tolerant high-availability pair that provide three tiers of protection.

[Mar 10, 2008] Gulf Breeze Blog SCEProlog - Prolog for the State Based Correlation Engine

A new release of OpenESM for Prolog (V1.1) is now available at Sourceforge. This new release includes a Prolog engine for the TEC 3.9 State Based Correlation Engine (SCE).

You can download the new release at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gulfsoft

Here are some notes from the Readme:

SCEProlog - Prolog for the State Based Correlation Engine

This library implements a Prolog environment as a State Based Correlation Engine custom action. Why would you want to use Prolog at the TEC Gateway or adapter level? Firstly, a Prolog environment would allow you to leverage most of your existing Prolog facts and logic that enrich events before true event correlation. Secondly, the Prolog language provides a flexible and powerful language to manipulate event objects. Finally, since Prolog is the base language for the TEC rule language, it is familiar to every seasoned TEC rule writers.

The underlying Prolog implementation for SCEProlog is GNU Prolog for Java (http://gnuprologjava.sourceforge.net/) by Constantine A. Plotnikov. While this project seems stagnant, I found it the simplest to integrate with the State Based Correlation Engine. Included with this distribution is the gnuprolog.jar file. If you desire to see the source of the GNU Prolog for Java library it is available for download from the original project website.

The SCEProlog environment implements the most of the ISO standard with the following additional predicates:

BIM Prolog compatability:
lowertoupper(LowerAtom,UpperAtom)
inttoatom(Integer,Atom)
realtoatom(Real,Atom)
atomconcat(Atom1,Atom2,Concat)
atomconcat(AtomList,Concat)
append(List1,List2,ApendedList)
member(Element,List)
memberchk(Element,List)
erase(Key)
erase(Key1,Key2)
record(Key,Term)
record(Key1,Key2,Term)
recorded(Key,Term)
recorded(Key1,Key2,Term)
rerecord(Key,Term)
rerecord(Key1,Key2,Term)

State based Correlation Engine:
set_event_class(ClassName)
get_event_class(ClassName)
set_event_slot(SlotName,SlotValue)
get_event_slot(SlotName,SlotValue)
get_event_slot(SlotName,SlotValue,DefualtValueIfNotSet)
delete_event_slots(SlotNameList)
discard_event
forward_event(SCE_RuleName_List)
get_rule_id(SCE_RuleId)
get_rule_variable(SCE_VariableName,VariabeValue)

IP Address Name Resolution:
get_hostname(IPAddress_or_Name,Hostname)
get_ipaddress(Hostname,IPAddress)
get_local_hostname(LocalHostname)
get_local_ipaddress(LocalIPAddress)
get_canonical_hostname(IPAddress_or_Name,CanonicalHostname)

Regular Expressions:
regex_create(RegexID,Pattern)
regex_create(RegexID,Pattern,RegexFlagList)
valid RegexFlag values:
canon_eq,
case_insensitive,
comments,
dotall,
multiline,
unicode_case,
unix_lines
regex_exists(RegexID)
regex_match(RegexID,Atom)
regex_match(RegexID,Atom,GroupMatchList)
regex_replace(RegexID,Atom,Replacement,Result)

Misc. Utilities:
get_system_property(JavaSystemProperty,PropertyValue)

You can see the rest of the notes in the readme that is part of the gb_08MAR2006.zip file

[Nov 21, 2008] RiverMuse Emerging from Stealth Mode by doug

See also Initial presentation at OSS Professionals

Event Processing — dougmcclure.net

This open source start up is unveiling their exciting message and pre-release web site for what could be an industry changing tipping point that firmly places open source as a viable alternative to the “Big4″ and the “Other 6″ within any sized company in any industry.

RiverMuse has launched their website and has plans for initial software availability in early November. RiverMuse (Riversoft and Micromuse) is the brainchild of the founders of the Micromuse and the industry recognized Netcool/OMNIbus solution.

• Chief Science Officer: Philip Tee – Co-Founder of Micromuse/CTO, Founder of RiverSoft/CTO & Chairman, Early software designer Avantgarde (Boole & Babbage/BMC Event Manager)
• Chief Technology Officer: Predrag [Fred] Mutavdzic – Architect Netcool Mediation Technologies, Micromuse
• Executive Director: Mike Silvey – Co-Founder of Micromuse/SVP Marketing and Business Development, VP Business Development and Marketing at RiverSoft.

Here’s a snip from their website - clearly positioning their product at those who’ve made significant investments in or are considering Netcool/OMNIbus technology with promises of a brighter future, improved architecture and a roadmap that if delivered would easily place this open source alternative in the leader’s quadrant of any analyst’s market assessment.

Their plans for putting the administrators first is AWESOME. They get the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) issue with the Big4 and Other6. They’re putting that first OVER any current buzzword bingo (ITIL, ISM, SOA, Green, and yes even BSM - Mike and I need to have more heart to heart talks on that!). Run the numbers in any decent sized monitoring shop and look at the staff and maintenance costs (HW and SW) and you’ll see that something has to be done in the next decade of IT management and monitoring. Do more with less, smarter, cheaper (free) tools, products and solutions as a competitive differentiator (and job security).

That is, if they can deliver. Some that I’ve talked to advised me that “they’d believe it when they see it”. I spoke with Mike a couple months back and took away the sense of a solid vision and plan to execute against. I’d love to hear about some big wins, replacements or other success (benchmarks against Netcool/OMNIbus, OpenNMS, HPOV, EMC/SMARTS, BMC, etc.). I’ve signed up for the software and look forward to kicking the tires!

RiverMuse for IBM Tivoli Netcool Owners

(IBM Tivoli Netcool Omnibus / Micromuse Netcool Omnibus, Cisco InfoCenter)

What a great product – we think so, we originally conceived, designed and built Netcool as an antidote to the offerings of the day. However, we never finished it and, neither did the people who inherited Micromuse after we left, nor have [or will] IBM. The issue is Netcool’s discombobulated configuration methods that lead to an ownership Tax on you, the customer.

Although Netcool is undoubtedly the best-of-the-best Legacy Event Management system, having invented:

* the Exclusive event paradigm
* automatic repeat filtering ‘de-duplication’
* drag and drop correlation, and
* simplified event enrichment

Netcool hobbles around on a major Achilles Heel. Namely, the more filtering and correlation, the more embedded complexity in the platform since Netcool has three different configuration programming languages that have no configuration integrity. Consequently, the more you use Netcool the higher the Total Cost of Ownership gets.

RiverMuse offers the same out of the box functionality as Netcool, however with a thoroughly modern architecture, configuration is easier to perform and maintain offering a significantly lower total cost of ownership. Oh, and did we tell you the core RiverMuse FreeCool is free?

RiverMuse will gradually introduce migration tools for Netcool customers, initially we’ll enable our customers to consuming Netcool Probe events, and in the future, RiverMuse will launch a ‘Netcool Configuration Conversion’ tool to simplify migrations of Probe Rules and ObjectServer Triggers and Actions.

[Feb 14, 2007] Monolith Software

Monolith Software understands that you've had your Micromuse system for a while. We also understand that the process of migrating platforms may raise some anxiety. Monolith Software is the first legitimate solution that can not only replace Netcool Omnibus, but also improve upon its functionality. Until now your options have been limited and those that have positioned a replacement are dictating a whole new methodology and approach to your operations process (i.e. SMARTS).

Monolith Event Manager does not change the way your operations group works. The system has been designed to work with your existing processes and procedures. We have tools to help our customers migrate their existing rules and scripts thereby ensuring not only a seamless transition, but also reuse of your existing intellectual capital.

Top Reasons You'll Love our Solution

• 100% Browser Based with No Plug-ins (java or active x) - Say Goodbye to JRE for Good
• Significantly Lower Costs with Unlimited Client Licensing / Unlimited Device Licensing
• Leverages AJAX - Quicker Response than Webtop
• Rules are Perl Syntax versus 'Perl Like' - Lowers Development and Maintenance Costs
• Industries first 'Available Source Licensing Mode' - Protecting your future and Allowing Extensibility

If your maintenance renewal is approaching or if you are looking for a solution that addresses many of Netcool's shortcomings, then we'd encourage you to take a look at Monolith. Innovation is alive and well in the management space. Ask us about our special promotion for Netcool Migrations.
 

[Apr 17, 2006] Investors seek network-management innovation - Network World By Cara Garretson

April 17, 2006 (Network World) Special Focus: Start-ups seeking to challenge the dominance of complex network management suites draw rounds of funding.

Start-up companies looking to challenge the dominance enjoyed by expensive, complex network-management suites are attracting second and third rounds of funding from venture capitalists eager to get in on the next big thing.

In particular, investors are putting money into companies with network-monitoring and -troubleshooting products that are attracting customers who want to care for their networks without the cost and dedicated staff demanded by CA's Unicenter, IBM's Tivoli and HP's OpenView - typically considered the leading products in this market.

Start-ups Cittio, Splunk and GroundWork Open Source Solutions have received a combined $35 million in the past 13 months, and a fourth company called LogLogic says it will soon announce a third round of investment, following the $13 million it received in September 2004 (see graphic). Attracting investors to companies such as these is the promise of a new generation of network-management tools that may be innovative and nimble enough to eventually supplant the incumbent.

Importance of solid net management

Broadly defined, network management is a $3.5 billion market, says Benjamin Nye, managing director of venture capital with Bain Capital in Boston. As networks become more distributed physically and populated with devices, network management is more important than ever, he says.

"Think about the distributed organization today; it's the norm, not the exception," Nye says. "Whether you're big or small, if you're running a mission-critical network, look at how many different devices are resident on the network. . . . There's much more dependency that rides on that network."

In February 2005, Bain invested $12 million in Network Intelligence, which sells software that monitors and reports on network events for security and compliance purposes.

Managing the increased complexity in the network calls for a new breed of simpler, sleeker tools, some investors say.

Despite his extensive background in network management, Marc Sokol, CA's former vice president of marketing and now a partner at venture capital firm JK&B Capital in Chicago, waited six years before investing in a network-monitoring start-up.

"It's because the big guys - Unicenter, Tivoli and OpenView - commanded such market control," he says. "But today there's a large market of customers that for lots of different reasons consider the Big Three not to be options - either the license fee priced them out of the market, or the cost of implementation or the customer just didn't need all those features."

At the end of March, JK&B invested $8 million in Cittio, maker of network-monitoring and -operations software called WatchTower. In January, the firm invested $10 million in Splunk, which creates a search engine that helps troubleshoot systems by navigating through the logs they create. Sokol has taken a seat on the board of directors of both companies.

Cittio breaks out of the traditional network-management mold by offering a critical management function, monitoring, that's relatively inexpensive and easily integrates with third-party products, Sokol says.

"I think there's now a need for disintegration among [network-management components]," Sokol says. "Because of new service-oriented architectures and the [Asynchronous JavaScript + XML] user interface, you can get the benefits of integration without having to sell an all-in-one product."

A streamlined approach

While Cittio and other companies offer more streamlined approaches to network monitoring, enterprises are usually hesitant to bet on products from start-ups, especially for a task as crucial as keeping the network running.

"That's always going to be the challenge" for start-ups, says James Governor, principal analyst with RedMonk. To get around this hurdle, start-ups need to partner with bigger vendors that can introduce them to customers and, to some extent, vouch for them. Or, as in Cittio's case, they need to focus on one aspect of a larger market.

"Cittio has very explicitly stated they don't offer all the functions that larger vendors offer, but they're trying to define a sweet spot," Governor says.

Some organizations are willing to take their chances with products from start-ups to get the features they need at an affordable price.

The National Parks Conservation Association chose Cittio's WatchTower network-monitoring tool so the IT department can find trouble spots on the network, says Caterina Luppi, the nonprofit organization's IT director.

"We didn't have anything before, and that created a number of problems," Luppi says. "The users were being our alarm system; we were finding out something wasn't working, because there was a user complaining."

The Washington, D.C.-based organization, which has about 85 users on its network, uses IT products from a diverse group of vendors; Luppi chose Cittio's WatchTower because it gives the LAN administrator a single point from which to monitor them all.

Cittio's tool also is relatively inexpensive, an important consideration for a nonprofit group, she says. According to company officials, WatchTower is priced at between $200 and $400 per node, depending on number of nodes managed.

"The big network-management suites were totally out of our budget, and I don't have the manpower to use 100% of their features," Luppi says. "That would be like buying a truck and using it as a bike."

Other network-monitoring and -troubleshooting tools from relative newcomers also are making inroads.

Splunk, which approaches network management by helping IT staff find the proverbial needle in a haystack, says 35,000 people have downloaded its search engine since it launched in August 2005. The company's Splunk Professional search software filters through all the logs and other data generated by IT systems, devices and applications so problems can be found and fixed faster, according to the company. It is priced at $2,500 for an annual license.

LogLogic also attempts to enhance network troubleshooting by capturing logs from all of a corporation's hardware and software in what it calls a log-management intelligence platform. Delivered as an appliance, LogLogic lets customers analyze, store, generate reports on data for compliance and risk mitigation, company officials say. The LogLogic Compliance Suite starts at $10,000.

Log data more relevant

While he doesn't see log management falling under the definition of network management, RedMonk's Governor says companies such as LogLogic, Splunk and others are making log data more relevant for network managers.

"Network management tends to be real time; log management is after the fact - it's more about looking at what happened and analyzing that," Governor says. "These companies are making log management more of a real-time function, and then it becomes more valuable. It's moving from being a subset of security management to more of an application-management function."

Another company, GroundWork Open Source Solutions, is positioning its IT monitoring tool as costing a fraction of what commercial products go for. GroundWork Monitor Professional, based on open source components, including Nagios, RRDTool and MySQL, gives customers a central point for monitoring applications, databases, servers and network equipment, officials say.

GroundWork Monitor Professional costs about $16,000 for an annual subscription and is installed at "hundreds of enterprises," according to company officials.

gartner_enterprise-event-mgmt-magic-quadrant

[PDF] Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Event Management, 2003 Enterprise ...

You should not generally believe Gartner :-)

PerformanceIT Management Software Gets AIX Agents

PerformanceIT, which peddles the ProIT line of system management tools that integrate application, systems, and network performance management tools into a single entity, announced last week that it has launched ProIT Version 3.1, which includes management agents for IBM's AIX 5L 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 operating systems running on pSeries and RS/6000 servers. The new version of the software also has a feature called Impact Analyzer, which can measure the effect of actual network changes on overall performance of the IT infrastructure or model the effect of proposed network changes on the way infrastructure performs.

ProIT competed with BMC Software's Patrol, IBM's Tivoli, and Hewlett-Packard's OpenView system management programs. The ProIT software is roughly priced based on the number of servers it controls, and costs under $50,000 for the typical user, which PerformanceIT says is a lot lower than the $150,000 or more that the typical customer using the above mentioned performance management suites tend to pay. The software runs on Windows, Unix, and Linux platforms.

http--www.networkworld.com-news-2005-052305-bmc.html

BMC overhauls management software

By Denise Dubie, Network World, 05/23/05

At management software vendor BMC, these days it's all about streamlining.

The company last month said it is shedding 12% of its staff to tighten expenses in the face of disappointing revenue. And this month BMC says it is revamping its product line, consolidating previously separate software packages and simplifying licensing.

The company this year and next will eliminate the Patrol brand it has touted since acquiring the system management technology in 1994 and reinvent its product portfolio under the moniker Performance Manager. Among the new offerings planned is Performance Manager for Servers, a combination of Patrol for Unix and Patrol for Windows.

The changes won't be in name alone. BMC has redesigned its core software so customers get agent-based and agentless products under the same license. Previously, customers needed to buy agent-based Patrol and agentless Patrol Express separately.

Products within the Performance Manager line also will share a database, a console for configuration and provisioning, and a user interface for reporting.

"The trend right now among management vendors is to fix all the installation, integration and performance problems in their existing tools and supplement them with features to help IT managers get a consistent way to measure performance and availability across their network infrastructure, security and applications," says George Hamilton, a senior analyst at The Yankee Group.

Industry watchers say BMC needed to do something to breathe life into its $1.4-billion business. It announced last month that preliminary revenue estimates for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2005, ended March 31, would fall below expectations, at $388 million to $400 million, down from the previous forecast of $410 million to $425 million. BMC cited customers' delayed spending as a reason for the lower revenue.

"BMC, and in particular Computer Associates, this year really have to prove they are going to deliver on their product plans to customers to maintain their installed bases," Hamilton adds.

That includes sorting out and integrating technologies acquired from Calendra, Marimba and OpenNetwork to fill out its long-term business service management strategy. BMC has named Tom Bishop, formerly with Vieo and Tivoli, to lead its technology direction as CTO.

"It's important BMC streamline it's technology because management tools can be expensive, and it needs to keep its customers as the market is going to continue to consolidate," says Lance Travis, a vice president with AMR Research. "The redesigned Patrol will also better serve the company's bigger plans of [business service management] in the long term."

In an attempt to make its software more attractive, BMC is focusing on basics, such as easing installation.

Performance Manager, using provisioning technology BMC acquired via Marimba last July, will distribute agents only to servers that require higher-level management and will do so automatically based on customer configurations. Patrol depended on centralized server software, and required an agent be installed on every managed server to deliver on its performance and availability-management promises. Patrol Express was designed without agents to help customers remotely manage systems at branch offices.

BMC customer Marc Machin, senior systems engineer at Lender's Service in Santa Ana, Calif., says he's looking forward to the upcoming changes.

"Anything that could lighten the footprint of management software on a machine would be welcome," says Machin, who maintains six consoles for Patrol applications across a network of 150 Windows servers. "I'd still like an agent on certain servers to automatically take an action or react to an event, but there are more servers that don't need agents than there are ones that do."

In June, BMC says it will start to offer its single-license model to customers under the new brand, and in December the company expects to start shipping new products with the architecture.

All contents copyright 1995-2005 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com BMC Revs Management Tool
August 18, 2003
By  Paula Musich

BMC Software Inc. this week will launch the MasterCell technology it acquired last April with the acquisition of IT Masters Inc. under a new moniker and with further integration into BMC's management tools.

The Houston company's new Service Impact Manager, which automatically links IT assets with the business services they support, detects changes in the status of those assets and communicates the impact of those changes to targeted users, according to Mark Levy, director of product management for BMC.

The updated software includes new integration with Patrol Enterprise Manager, allowing it to gather event data from BMC's Event Manager. It can also integrate with other event management systems, such as IBM's Tivoli Enterprise Console, and with BMC's Remedy trouble-ticketing system.

"The Patrol integration was enhanced to make it easier to integrate existing systems managed by Patrol," said Gary Davis, product manager for Service Impact Manager.

BMC split up the event management function in the original MasterCell tool to create a separate Event Manager, which will also be launched this week. Event Manager collects, processes and automates events from the IT infrastructure, automatically reducing redundant events. It displays results in user-customized views, based on roles and preferences, and feeds the results to Service Impact Manager to aid in prioritizing IT response to outages.

"It does let you see the relationship between a particular asset or a process ... and how events will affect other things because of those relationships," said John Siniawski, senior partner at Renovance LLP, in Chicago. "In the old days, you'd get a Tivoli alert, and it tells you the IP address of the problem but gives you no visualization of how it affects things."

Service Impact Manager is available now in a new service starter pack that includes the infrastructure, console and predefined service components for $80,000. Event Manager's pricing starts at $50,000.

BMC Software Broadens Management Capabilities with Acquisition of IT Masters

HOUSTON - (March 25, 2003) - BMC Software, Inc., [NYSE: BMC], a leader in enterprise management, today announced that it has acquired IT Masters International S.A., an enterprise management solutions company, for approximately $42 million. The acquisition further strengthens BMC Software's market leading Service Level Management solutions by adding adaptive service management capabilities to BMC Software's leading enterprise-wide offerings. The acquisition adds approximately 75 IT Masters employees to BMC Software.

IT Masters is a privately-held company with software development offices in Belgium and Austin, Texas. The company develops service management technology that allows customers to model and visualize IT infrastructure components correlated with the ultimate services being delivered. With this technology, IT organizations can prioritize their work according to their company's critical business needs. Specifically, customers can prioritize problem responses in a real-time, business-relevant manner by directly linking service delivery and support with IT infrastructure and application elements.

The acquisition of IT Masters enhances BMC Software's ability to provide best-in-class tools with an integrated service management approach. BMC Software's comprehensive enterprise management solutions combined with IT Masters' service modeling capabilities will enable customers to manage their business with a truly integrated service management approach.

IT Masters' flagship product is MasterCell^TM, an adaptive service management solution. The MasterCell technology will be a key element of BMC Software's service management strategy, providing the base platform for service impact management, real-time service modeling, root-cause analysis and service level agreement management. MasterCell is already integrated with BMC Software's PATROL^® for distributed systems. BMC Software's leading systems management solutions MAINVIEW^®, for mainframe systems, and INCONTROL^®, for batch scheduling and output management, as well as the Remedy IT Service Management products will be tightly integrated with the MasterCell technology in the future to extract key data from the enterprise. The information will be used to enhance MasterCell's adaptive service management capabilities so that the impact of all IT objects on real-time service delivery is easily understood by IT and business professionals.

In addition to MasterCell, IT Masters also delivers MasterAR Suite^TM, a suite of productivity tools that are integrated into the Remedy Action Request System^®, (AR System^®). AR System, an application platform and comprehensive development environment, was obtained by BMC Software as part of its acquisition of Remedy in November 2002.

"The acquisition of IT Masters and its leading service management solutions gives BMC a significant advantage in the industry and strengthens our ability to help our customers understand more fully how the performance and availability of IT technology impacts specific business services," said Mary Nugent, vice president and general manager, Service Management Solutions, BMC Software. "Knowing there is constant pressure on IT and business managers to reduce costs and target improvement efforts to areas that are critical to the business, companies need solutions that will help them understand where to focus. IT Masters' technology allows modeling of the relationships between elements of the business service so that service can be managed dynamically. This makes the customer's service management infrastructure more adaptable so that their business can change faster."

"We believe that this is the best strategic move for IT Masters and that the combination of both companies' strengths will greatly benefit our customers and the marketplace," said Philippe Moitroux, IT Masters President and CEO. "BMC Software's powerful enterprise-wide solutions coupled with our leading model-based approach, which can capture change information and discover changes in the environment, will not only allow customers to take control of their technology but more importantly allow them to move ahead and provide proactive service management."

About IT Masters
IT Masters is an enterprise management solutions company providing intelligent software solutions allowing companies to effectively manage their IT infrastructure and quickly analyze the impact technology has on their business. MasterCell™ is an adaptive service management solution that delivers cost effective, reliable and flexible event management via a highly scalable cellular architecture. IT Masters has offices in the United States and Europe. For more information, visit http://www.itmasters.com.

About BMC Software
BMC Software, Inc. [NYSE:BMC], is a leader in enterprise management. The company focuses on Assuring Business Availability^® for its customers by helping them proactively improve service, reduce costs and increase value to their business. BMC Software solutions span enterprise systems, applications and databases. Founded in 1980, BMC Software has offices worldwide and is a member of the S&P 500, with fiscal year 2002 revenues of approximately $1.3 billion. Visit www.bmc.com to learn more.

System and method of enterprise systems and business impact management - Patent 6983321

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6983321.html Abstract:
A system architecture and a method for management using a cellular architecture to allow multi-tier management of events such as the managing of the actual impact or the potential impact of IT infrastructure situations on business services.

A preferred embodiment includes a high availability management backbone to frame monitoring operations using a cross-domain model where IT Component events are abstracted into IT Aggregate events.

By combining IT Aggregate events with transaction events, an operational representation of the business services is possible. Another feature is the ability to connect this information to dependent business user groups such as internal end-users or external customers for direct impact measurement.

A web of peer-to-peer rule-based cellular event processors preferably using Dynamic Data Association constitutes management backbone crossed by event flows, the execution of rules, and distributed set of dynamic inter-related object data rooted in the top data instances featuring the business services.

[Dec 02, 2002]  MasterCell promises mastery over IT servicesBy Dennis Drogseth

As many of you know, root-cause analysis and automated fault resolution have been an area of particular interest for me. It's sad to see that with the exception of SMARTS and a few other vendors, this market has struggled as much as it has.

Innovators are often discounted because of their small size and possible instability, even with worthwhile approaches. Of course, some products did not evolve quickly enough to survive the downturn. Small companies with visionary products not ready for showtime got hit hard.

With that in mind, it pleases me to focus this column on one of the more worthwhile innovators and something of a success story: IT Masters.

IT Masters' MasterCell deliberately stays away from "root-cause," which the company feels is too network-centric. Its own "roots" are in systems event automation, and so MasterCell's design point is unusual, well suited to large enterprises with other management investments seeking to rein in operational costs and to more effectively automate service availability across an infrastructure.

MasterCell adapts to adjustments in production-level environments and can export events to a relational database. But it doesn't yet do historical reporting, trending or analysis.

IT Masters has done an exceptionally good job of identifying critical "role players" who can profit from its capabilities. Each person gets a targeted set of reports and screens. These include operations center personnel seeking to manage infrastructure availability in real time, help desk personnel seeking superior support for service calls, service managers seeking a clear overview of real-time service availability, and "users" seeking visibility into contracted services (both within the enterprise and from external sources).

With headquarters both in Austin, Texas, and Brussels, Belgium, it's not surprising that IT Masters' customers are distributed across both continents, often in financial institutions, but MasterCell is also supporting a healthy mix of other enterprise verticals and service providers, as well.

IT Masters expects its customers to have other vendors' products and leverages those products in MasterCell. It is designed to tap data sources from Tivoli, BMC Patrol, HP OpenView, CA Unicenter, Peregrine ServiceCenter, Remedy ARS, and Dirig Fenway. It has custom adapters as well. The product also can import events directly through adapters for NT event logs, file log adapters for Unix or Windows platforms, and of course SNMP traps from network sources.

At the heart of MasterCell's design are flexible, lightweight event processors that can run on nondedicated hardware and can support up to 500 events per second. Every transaction is logged and then committed to local files, saving the need for an added relational database. This "cellular," peer-to-peer architecture enables failover - and prevents having a single point of failure. One drawback, which IT Masters recognizes, is that these event processors do not yet have a central point for automated distribution and installation.

On the other hand, IT Masters has a sophisticated and effective approach to user administration with its Configuration Server. The MasterCell Configuration Server can leverage Lightweight Directory Access Protocol to support user authentication, role-based security, user preferences and licensing.

IT Masters does not claim that MasterCell works "out of the box" - an admission which is, I suppose, refreshing. What MasterCell provides is an automated, adaptive environment for automation policies to function within (the Dynamic Data Model), so that rules can relate in plug-and-play fashion to a wide variety of environments or changes in environments, and so that they can be amended dynamically without shutting down the system. IT Masters also provides its own MasterCell Rules language, and a Graphical Configuration Editor - making developing rules more a "paint by the numbers" process than in more traditional event management systems.

MasterCell GUIs are effective and, as I indicated, targeted at specific user types. Those supporting administrators are flexible and easily navigated, but won't win any awards at the Whitney Biennial. On the other hand, the service views are strong graphical representations with easy drill-down, so that service failure interdependencies are easily and automatically viewable in real time.

MasterCell is a strong product for large enterprises seeking effective control of their services. Installations can range from $50,000 to $250,000, but then this is a strategic investment with significant operational and business advantages. If you're seeking control over infrastructure service availability beyond the network - and if you want to consolidate and enhance existing management investments - MasterCell should definitely be on your short list.

[March 31, 2003] BMC grabs IT Masters The Register

BMC Software has acquired IT Masters International S.A. and its 75 staff for around $42m, writes Tony Lock.

IT Masters supplies software management tools which assess the impact that technology has on business services. The company's principal offering, MasterCell, is an adaptive management tool that is used to model the effect that IT service level degradation will have on business processes. In effect the technology allows the effect of varying IT service delivery to be assessed, in real time, for its impact on real world business.

BMC is to incorporate MasterCell in its frontline service management offerings to improve its capability to supply service management, real-time service modelling, root cause analysis and service level management. BMC already has a head start with the assimilation of MasterCell as the technology is already integrated with the well-known BMC Patrol product line.

BMC will integrate MasterCell with its MainView mainframe management tool and INCONTROL, the company's batch scheduling and output management system. BMC also plans to integrate its new acquisitions with its Remedy IT Service Management product.

The purchase of IT Masters will also see its collection of productivity tools, MasterAR Suite, integrated with the Remedy Action Request System.

For the past year or so most major systems management software vendors have been looking for ways to enhance the value of their offerings. The so-called gang of four (BMC Patrol, CA UniCenter, HP OpenView and IBM/Tivoli) are all now capable of providing technology capable of monitoring and managing IT systems. However, until recently there was limited ability to assess the impact that different levels of IT service would have on the business itself; and it is this area that the suppliers have been actively working to improve.

Today business impact is the only reasonable measure against which IT service should be looking to be measured. If BMC can incorporate the IT Masters technology successfully into its core offerings the company has the potential to move forward significantly in the race to provide proactive service management to business customers.

It islikely than there will be many more acquisitions and mergers in the near future among management tools suppliers. ©
IT-Analysis.com

MasterCell Base Pack - 3.1.00 - mastercell documentation

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December 16, 2002  MasterCell 3.0 Highlights Services Trouble-Shooting

MasterCell 3.0 Highlights Services Trouble-Shooting Paula Musich
December 16, 2002

As more enterprises try to dissect system failures and performance problems, IT Masters Inc. is readying updated tools that can automatically show the impact of IT trouble on services and business processes.

The company's newest MasterCell product, Version 3.0, includes new services modeling functions that allow the status of services to be correlated with the availability and health of the IT infrastructure components that deliver those services, according to officials. The product was originally designed to be more scalable than traditional client/server-oriented ESM (enterprise systems management) frameworks or suites.

The IT organization at a large German bank, Postbank Systems AG, chose Master- Cell over IBM's Tivoli Enterprise Console because of its scalability and resilience. The tool also won out over BMC Software Inc.'s Patrol Event Manager and Computer Associates International Inc.'s Unicenter, according to Hans-Joachim von de Lieth, a project leader at Postbank, in Bonn.

"For the first time, we're able to see the relationship between different hardware and software components in one view, so we can decide what the business impact is of certain errors and prioritize problems," von de Lieth said. "If a key component of our hardware or software has a failure, we can instantly see if [an ATM or online banking interface] is affected."

MasterCell is made up of cells, or lightweight event processors, placed strategically across an enterprise IT infrastructure. The cells form a peer-to-peer network to share the processing load and results for events and information gathered from third-party elements. The P2P cell network allows information to be pushed to appropriate users.

MasterCell provides bidirectional integration with such ESM tools as Patrol, Tivoli Enterprise Manager and Tivoli Netview, Unicenter, and Hewlett-Packard Co.'s OpenView. It can gather SNMP events, Windows events and Unix system events.

MasterCell is also integrated with service desk systems such as Peregrine Systems Inc.'s ServiceCenter and BMC's Remedy Action Request system.

"We provide two-way interactions, so we can get information out of a third-party product and push information into it," said Jean-Marc Trinon, chief technology officer at IT Masters, in Brussels, Belgium. "That's important in describing the service provisioning."

MasterCell also adapts to changing environments. "Cells will automatically reassess what the business impact is when you change infrastructure or [service- level agreements]," said Trinon.

Despite the difficult IT spending environment, privately held IT Masters managed to increase its revenues by 30 percent in the third quarter—on top of 15 percent growth in the second. The 7-year-old company, which has 80 employees, says it has more than 1,000 customers.

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