Is ESM the next big thing?

THE ESM OUTLOOK

Systems management software is experiencing healthy numbers. In 2006, IBM spent $5 billion on 14 acquisitions - six of which were within its Tivoli management division.

HP spent $4.5 billion in 2006 and acquired Mercury Interactive, a management software and services company.

CA also bought application-management software vendor Wily Technology for $375 million.

Finally, BMC Software acquired application problem resolution software maker Identify Software for $150 million.

Gartner`s Dataquest division puts the annual growth rate of systems management software at 10.2%, which includes both mainframe and distributed computing products.

Says Charl Louw, infrastructure consulting and enterprise architecture head at Accenture: "The new Microsoft System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM) is an upgrade of the existing Systems Management Server (SMS). In the overall context, SCCM offers a fairly small, but vital, part of the overall ESM functionality as defined by the four market leaders in this field. Leaders are BMC Software, HP Software, CA and IBM Tivoli with an expected 45% of the market in 2007."

He does not really see Microsoft as a threat to the industry, stating: "Microsoft has always been in this space through their SMS and MOM products."

HEALTHY COMPETITION

Current leaders, says Louw, feel that although Microsoft may take elements of the market, is could also bring opportunities to their business.

Says Gary Lawrence, CA Africa country manager: "Microsoft does not necessarily pose a threat; however, anyone that does not take the company seriously does so at their peril. It has earned respect as a company and when Microsoft focuses on a product or solution, it does a good job."

He says: "Given the experience of a company like CA in the ESM market, we partner with Microsoft on a number of levels and anticipate these relationships to continue. In fact, we believe that Microsoft`s entry into the market will add momentum to the ESM market. We believe that this will create additional opportunity for CA to manage and integrate the Microsoft tools, and so provide a simple, unified view of the environment for easy proactive management." Steve Chittenden, Business Connexion senior manager: ICT planning and architecture, says: "I don`t believe that they are a big threat at the moment, primarily because their product is homogenous. They can only play in the Microsoft space, which is a big space, but it is not everything. I also don`t think that it is a mature product yet, and there are areas - such as backup and recovery and storage area networks (SANs) - that they do not handle at the moment, but they will get there and they might do it quicker than we expect."

CLOSER TO HOME

As international numbers often echo what is happening on local shores, ESM in SA is also experiencing healthy growth.

Says Louw: "It is definitely growing, with a sizable jump in overall sales during 2006. However, local enterprises are still focusing on acquiring point solutions (e.g. fault management) instead of focusing on end-to-end solutions driven by standard processes. I believe that 2007 will see a continuation of 2006, with increased uptake in change and configuration management, IT asset management and business service management."

According to Lawrence: "Most business owners and managers will readily concede that they are highly dependent on their computer systems to conduct business and, in fact, in many cases organisations` dependence on their computer systems is increasing. As such, effective ESM continues to enjoy the perception that it is a critical necessity to ensure the predictability, reliability and availability of those systems."

He also notes, however, that ESM is not always referred to as such; companies may, for example, refer to network, systems, desktop or database management as separate disciplines.

"Taken together, these and other elements constitute ESM," he says. "Even organisations like Gartner tend to look at individual elements rather than the whole. In short, any company dependent on technology would be taking serious risks if it were not to make use of ESM technologies to ensure the dependability of its systems; hence the growth that we are experiencing in our ESM business both internationally and locally."

Says Chittenden: "Enterprise systems management is typically a series of integrated tool sets. In South Africa, ESM could be seen as the first step towards ICT services management. If companies want to move up to fully fledged services, such as mail services or services on demand, they need to have certain ESM tools deployed. Many of these tools, such as those that deal with proactive event management, asset management, performance management, or mail services, underpin these services."

THE HUMAN FACTOR

So what are the practicalities surrounding ESM deployment in organisation? For instance, what are the total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) issues, as ESM emphasises that updating and servicing equipment is likely to be a major cost?

Says Lawrence: "ESM can be considered in terms of TCO since the cost of equipment, systems and the services they enable can be calculated. If ESM ensures that systems are always running, it follows that losses are prevented. The value statement for ESM is ensuring availability of services and reducing the cost of the management of systems."

Chittenden says the fundamental reason for adopting ESM is to automate as much as possible, where possible. "The main idea here is to capitalise on human resources, which is particularly useful in South Africa where skills are so scarce. With ESM, companies can make better use of their human resources, as many of these can work from a central point and be shared when major problems occur," he says.

Louw agrees, saying: "The fact that these activities are considered a major cost is largely due to the human factor." He believes manual software updates and other labour-intensive systems and management processes are an expensive option, and that skilled staff are still one of the most expensive resources in the data-centre. "A good ESM implementation will aim to automate most of the update activities and only require human oversight from a quality perspective. Integrated fault and incident management systems offering de-duplication and root-cause analysis functionality will reduce restoration time and the reliance on large numbers of resources with diagnostic skills," he says.

NETWORK CONTROLLED OR CENTRALLY MANAGED?

Not only is there a choice between different ESM solutions, but companies need to decide how to attain the right balance of resources between a network-controlled or centrally-managed solution.

According to Louw, the decision depends on the network capacity connecting the various distributed components of the enterprise. "Network capacity should, first and foremost, be used for core business functions, e.g. transaction processing, collaboration, sales and marketing. We do not want to clutter the network with unnecessary management traffic," he says.

Lawrence believes the decision is dependent on the specific client environment and what they are trying to achieve with technology. "Centralised resources allow for better management (lower cost and easier administration), but this would be relative to the type of business," he says.

Chittenden advises that the main thing to consider is that, even when systems are being managed from a central point, there are still situations where hardware breaks. "So there must be people available to go out and fix these kinds of problems, be they on site or dispatched from a "break and fix" company. Nevertheless, we have seen that a large percentage of problems are soft, human errors, and able to be fixed remotely when ESM tools are deployed," he says.

WHAT ABOUT OUTSOURCING?

Outsourcing is always an alternative, especially to SMEs that may not have the budget to invest in the more expensive solutions.

According to Lawrence, "Typically, SMEs have not invested in ESM solutions since these are typically geared to meet the needs of enterprise clients. These companies tend to manage their IT environments in a disparate fashion. However, ESM is certainly relevant to them."

Louw says the three types of outsourcing options that companies can consider in this instance are full IT systems outsourcing (complete IT department), application maintenance (applicable to software portfolios only), and infrastructure outsourcing (hardware components). "All three of these are usually bundled with some kind of ESM capability as part of the service. Integration difficulties may exist in cases where incompatible products are being used by different outsourcing providers. Outsourcing commoditised infrastructure monitoring services to low-cost offshore venues are steadily gaining in popularity," he says.

OPEN SOURCE OR PROPRIETARY?

When it comes to making a decision between proprietary or open source, Louw explains that most integrated ESM solutions have a proprietary flavour and are usually offered by the leading vendors. "The upside of these solutions is good coverage across the ESM spectrum with fairly easy integration, while the downside may be the lack of required functionality in some areas. Some enterprises opt for "best-of-breed" solutions using the leading solutions in each functional area. These are usually very good solutions but run the risk of complex integration requirements. Compatibility between systems from different vendors is still an issue and will only be resolved if everybody accepts certain global standards."

With regard to open source systems, he feels they are currently a threat only in the network and server management space, but do offer good value to SMEs.

According to Chittenden, "Many large organisations have mainframe and/or Linux environments as well as Wintel - or whatever else may be installed, and, as such, don`t want to have a different tool for each section. It`s best to standardise and control the environment and train people to use the minimum number of ESM tools." He believes it an advantage to have a heterogeneous tool set to manage as many of the domains in the enterprise as possible. "You do get SMEs that rely on Microsoft, and in this case it is fine to use Microsoft tools, but it becomes a problem with ancillary areas like storage area networks, backup and recovery and security, which require different tools and different skills," he concludes.