Cisco Systems Inc has enhanced its Blue NSP Native Service Point network management product for mainframe environments. The new version, release 2.0, is claimed to extend the flexibility and functionality of managing Cisco devices with the IBM Corp NetView for MVS and Sterling Software Inc Solve: NetMaster management systems. By integrating the functionality with NetView and Solve: NetMaster, says Cisco, Native Service Point enables SNA-only and Cisco devices to be fully managed from a mainframe network management console using traditional SNA management tools. Native Service Point works with Cisco IOS operating system. It provides full-screen status panels and, claims Cisco, enables nearly any command that would otherwise be entered at the router console to be issued from the mainframe management console, without the need for TCP/IP on the host. Native Service Point includes features such as fast-path diagnosis to give a short-cut to diagnostic features, along with performance trending, configuration archiving, and Channel Interface Processor and Downstream Physical Unit management. The mainframe component of Native Service Point will be available in December for the NetView and NetMaster systems for $10.000. The router component is available as a feature of Cisco Internetwork Operating System version 11.0.
