Unison Software Inc, Sunnyvale, California is harnessing the latest and pre-existing technologies into a four-phase network management system that it will roll out between now and 1996, beginning with workload management software for scheduling, distribution and performance tuning. With this offering, Unison appears to be firmly in the Unix pot along with a slew of other vendors all keen to have their particular dish of networked systems management on users’ tables. Unison’s Maestro job scheduling software was brought across from its days as a Hewlett-Packard Co MPE software house and is available now; Load Balancer 4.01, which automatically queues and distributes jobs across heterogeneous Unix networks, storing details of which programs and applications were running in the event of failure; plus Express for performance tuning. Load Balancer, in use at some 3,500-odd MPE sites is from $900 for Solaris, SunOS, HP-UX and AIX with other Unix versions to follow. Phase two, high-speed back-up, is addressed by a Unix version of Unison’s RoadRunner server tape back-up system that is out now for HP-UX with AIX and Solaris versions to follow; it costs $3,500. Phase three of the strategy, output management, will be met by Unison’s Spoolmate software for print spooling, currently an HP 3000-only product that will arrive on Unix next year. Phase four, for 1996 and beyond, is still being evaluated; it will develop or acquire products to meet its needs where required. The Unison software supports OpenView and NetView for AIX Simple Network Management Protocol-based network managers, but not SunNet Manager. Unison in its present form is the result of a 1992 merger with Austin, Texas-based Tymlabs, and sees $20m revenue for this year, 40% of it from Unix sales, rising to 75% next year. Although still lucrative, the MPE market is certainly not going to grow, the company acknowledges. It has 30 staff one of its team working on Unix products, 20 on MPE technology. It believes other ‘duckpond’ Unix network management systems such as those of Legent Corp, 4th Dimension Inc, OpenVision Inc and Raxco Inc are not able to perform individual management tasks as well as it can.
