Large System Management vendors are shedding their domain and element-focused network management roots to aggressively pursue integrated products that manage workflow processes and end-user performance within distributed IT networks and Web services environments.
Before its customers at the HP Software Forum in Seattle this week, Hewlett-Packard executives expressed HP"s commitment toward reinvigorating its HP OpenView portfolio toward a services-oriented infrastructure software management model. This will allow customers to scale IT operations from an infrastructure provider to a service provider paradigm -- managing processes, software, and hardware based upon service-level objectives and business needs rather than events, according to Patty Azarello, vice president and general manager of Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP"s Software Global Business Unit.
Azarello admitted that HP OpenView absorbed its share of lumps a few years ago when network management needs centered upon mainframe demands and system management competitors scooped up a "ton of revenue" by hawking monolithic frameworks. But she believes that circumstance ultimately forced HP to concentrate its modular-by-design Network Node Manager product toward distributed environments much earlier in the game.