Web-based tools are the next big thing, as is a more strategic look
at the problem.
Systems management may seem like a dull cousin to a "hot" IT area
like, say, security. But the systems management arena continues to
grow and change, the beneficiary of both improved technology and a
new way of looking at the issue.
Simply put, systems management is the ability to monitor and improve
the performance of computers and their subsystems. It includes areas
such as job scheduling, output management (reports) and change or
configuration management. Depending on who you ask, it might also
include security, storage management and many other things.
One big reason that systems management hasn't just gone to sleep is
that many shops are looking to consolidate as much of their
distributed infrastructure as possible, at least from a management
perspective. Multiplatform systems management tools allow for a wide
view of that process -- a holistic approach to consolidation.
Another key factor driving a higher-level look at systems management
is that "there's a focus around delivering service levels, not just
managing specific devices," said Stephen Elliot, research director at
Hurwitz Group, a consultancy in Framingham, Mass. "It's one thing to
manage individual systems, and another to be proactive and prevent
problems before they happen with key revenue-producing applications."
As a result, IT professionals are being "pushed from the highest
levels" of their management, Elliott said, to solve problems outside
their usual job function. Database experts need to help solve
applications problems, while SAP experts may be called on to figure
out a systems issue. "It's really an attitude shift we're beginning
to see," he said, and systems management tools are a way of helping
to do this.
This is just beginning to happen, though, and the systems management
software market is suffering from the weak economy, just like most of
IT.
"The market in general declined in 2001," said Tim Grieser, program
vice president at research firm IDC, Framingham, Mass. "We expect it
to resume growth as the economy picks up." Overall, IDC is predicting
a 9.1% compound growth rate in systems management software, from
$3.05 billion in 2001 to $4.72 billion in 2006.
Four vendors -- BMC, Computer Associates, Hewlett Packard and
IBM/Tivoli -- hold about 75% of the enterprise systems management
market, although there are new vendors in this space, too, Grieser
said.
On the technology side, a few trends are helping drive this growth.
Among the biggest is Web-based management -- the ability to monitor
and fix multiple platforms from a Web interface. Almost all of the
major vendors have added this ability to their products, Elliot said.
Anyone who hasn't yet "definitely has it in their product road map,"
he said.
Then, too, there's the need to monitor the Web as another platform.
As more essential applications migrate to the Web, systems management
needs to track these systems, too. Web services will be among the
next waves to hit the systems management space, Grieser said, as will
wireless applications, at some point.
Indeed, it's the corporate adoption of new technologies that spurs
changes to systems management software in general, Grieser added.
When a new environment goes from development to production -- as has
been the case with J2EE, for instance -- systems management tools
must keep up to be able to monitor the new applications. There hasn't
been much demand for .NET yet, he said, because that platform isn't
yet in major production systems. But .NET "will become an issue over
next couple of years," he said.
Another technology trend worth watching is the whole notion of
"self-healing" systems. IBM, for example, has unveiled its Project
eLiza, which is all about the idea of monitoring and fixing IT gear
before it really breaks down. There can be little, or much, human
intervention, depending on the customer's choice.
"It's my understanding that most of the major vendors have
initiatives underway" in this area, Grieser said. Although many of
the current crop of event-management systems use some automated
responses to problems, the notion of total self-healing takes this
philosophy to new levels.
But it's early going; "we've yet to see a big rollout to what it
means in production to be self-healing," he said. "I think the
message behind this is trying to make system management more
automatic, trying to respond to the complexity of the environment
with smarter platforms." Another type of initiative along these lines
is what Grieser calls "pre-integrated" systems management, when
Oracle or SAP put systems management features into their
applications.
One notion that hasn't caught on in huge numbers is the idea of a
systems management framework, Grieser said. Shops generally like the
customization they get from "best-of-breed" tools that solve specific
problems. "So there's been a push-back against frameworks in favor of
point solutions," he said. Also, the economy has been working against
the outlay of the huge amounts of money typically required for
frameworks, which come complete with a raft of different management
tools that are all supposed to work together seamlessly.
And look for more from Microsoft about systems management, Grieser
said.
"I think they're very serious about becoming much more of a player in
systems management," he said. "If Windows is going to become a
trusted large-scale enterprise platform, it's got to be robust and
stable and managed in the same way as Unix and mainframes. Today
there are a lot of vendors that sell different aspects of Windows
management software; nobody's got a monopoly." But as Windows
applications become larger enterprise-level applications, robust
systems management features will be required.
MORE INFORMATION ON THIS TOPIC:
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