London-based Sun Microsystems Inc reseller Micromuse Ltd will be be showing off its complexity management software as part of a US and European expansion due to be announced at the Unix Expo show in New York next week. The software, called NetCool One, has been in development since at least March (CI No 2,128), and is touted by the firm as the first product of a family to be marketed by Micromuse’s US subsidiary, Acronym Ltd, which will introduce itself at the show. NetCool One is a static configuration and asset management system, with a management console that runs under Solaris, AIX and possibly HP-UX. It will monitor network licence usage and alert the console should the machine’s hardware configuration change. The system, to ship in six months, will work with most versions of Unix along with Windows 3.1 and Macintosh at agent level. Eventually, it will be able to run on network-specific hardware, ultimately finding its way into office equipment, according to Micromuse. Six to nine months after release, Acronym will follow up with NetCool Two, which will be able to define the situation in which specific problems occur on machines and take automatic action to rectify it. Both systems will run on top of the firm’s distributed messaging system, designed to minimise interference due to network traffic. The products will be sold in the US, the UK and the rest of Europe. The US venture will attack previously unexplored territory for Micromuse. With two start-up staff, the company hopes to turn over $300,000 in the first year, $500,000 in the next. In Europe, Micromuse is planning a new European subsidiary in Brussels or Switzerland. The NetCool family is part of Micromuse’s master plan to achieve distributed and optimised object oriented processing. Shortly to announce its year-end results, the privately-held company says turnover was up at around ?7m, from ?3.2m last time around. Managing director Chris Dawes is eyeing a possible flotation of the firm within two years.
