Microsoft Corp is to bundle Computer Associates International Inc’s RealWorld Interface in with NT 5.0, it emerged yesterday at CA+World in New Orleans. Real World Interface for NT is what CA calls a web-based enterprise management tool, shortened to WBEM, which just happens to be the same letters used in the long gestating Web Based Enterprise Management initiative established by more than 50 vendors, including Microsoft Corp, last year (CI No 3,180). CA’s software will provide a browser-based tool that provides management views of WBEM data, events and alerts. WBEM includes a common model for defining management data from various components, such as systems, network hardware and applications. Effectively, CA is shipping a version of its Unicenter framework, providing a basic level of systems management services that could later be upgraded to a full Unicenter implementation. But CA hasn’t got an exclusive: both IBM Corp’s Tivoli Systems Inc division and Hewlett-Packard Co countered the news with announcements of their own. Tivoli said that Microsoft had agreed to ship the Tivoli Management Agent with Windows NT 5.0, while HP claimed that it had come to a similar agreement with Microsoft to bundle the HP OpenView ManageX web-based agent.
