Hewlett-Packard Co sees the new Unicenter for OpenView collaboration with Computer Associates International Inc (CI No 2,617) attracting downsizers that can take advantage of Unicenter’s mainframe functions such as job scheduling, tape management and accounting-charge back alongside OperationsCenter’s event monitoring and administration. Under Unicenter for OpenView, intelligent agents will receive and pre-process events from Unicenter and forward them to OperationsCenter’s central console along with events that require the administrator’s attention. All 450-odd Unicenter events have pre-defined automatic OperationsCenter responses. The integrated OperationsCenter console has views of all managed systems and Unicenter applications and an interface to Unicenter problem management. Where there’s overlap between the two – and there is a significant amount in some areas – the customer can choose to switch off unwanted components, Hewlett says. There’s a choice between message browsers for instance. Like Hewlett-Packard’s standard OpenView product, the management server implementation of OperationsCenter and Simple Network Management Protocol for Unicenter runs only on HP-UX systems. It may be moved to other machines that Hewlett will target for OpenView, such as Windows NT, though that’s not been decided, it says. OperationsCenter (a problem management module) is one of Hewlett-Packard’s three OpenView process centres that run atop its SNMP Platform, or the enhanced version called Network Node Manager which comes with additional services and application development tools. The other two are AdminCenter for change and configuration management (due to ship in two months) and PCS/PerfView, the performance and resource management module. Hewlett-Packard says the agreement with Computer Associates doesn’t preclude a tie-up on the other process centres, though that’s not currently part of the plan. Meantime, there’s so much confusion about the difference between SNMP Platform and Network Node Manager that Hewlett is going to roll them into one product at its OpenView users conference in June. Hewlett-Packard says its tie-up with Computer Associates will make it more difficult for the likes of Tivoli Systems Inc, peddling a rival systems management suite, to establish their products, however other competitors such as Legent Corp are already hooked on OpenView, and building Hewlett code into their products.
