By John Rogers
Hewlett-Packard Co took the occasion of its OpenView channel partners gathering in Boston to announce product enhancements to its flagship enterprise management software and spread its message about the service management revolution. In addition to introducing improved programs for its channel partners, HP introduced new Windows NT management capabilities, new application management modules for ERP applications, and tools for network management. The idea is to offer modular service management – with packages that offer control of virtually everything in an enterprise. According to Karl Chen, OpenView channels marketing manager for the Americas, there is a fundamental change afoot in the landscape for enterprise management systems, with a growing distaste for large and costly framework solutions which, Chen claims, fail to deliver a return on investment 75% of the time. HP is thus pursuing a modular or building block approach which it feels allows customers to tackle specific problems with an immediate return on investment, and then build out fuller systems to remedy broader IT management challenges. HP’s approach, Chen said, also allows customers to respond to quick changes in the management of their systems and networks. The seven building blocks currently offered under the OpenView umbrella include: desktop and software management, application and system management, network management, storage management, security management, NT-centric management and IT service management. Competitors in these areas, such as Computer Associates International Inc and IBM Corp’s Tivoli Systems Inc, are now finding that their stiff framework approaches don’t meet customers needs, according to Chen, and are now beginning to break up the framework. Those companies are having problems in both scaling to the enterprise level and in the NT space – two key focus areas of the OpenView approach, Chen said. All this work seems to be paying off nicely, with the OpenView business growing over 40% in fiscal 1998 and bringing in about $1bn in revenue. He asserted that customers are voting with their money, and said that when this idea of service management really takes hold HP will no doubt find itself way ahead of the game. HP is continuing to make investments in OpenView, Chen said, and the company is on track to reach its stated goal of having software and related services account for 10% of its overall revenue by 2000.
