Computer Associates International Inc’s CA-Unicenter systems management software is a hot property these days. With Hewlett-Packard Co and Microsoft Corp already under its belt, the company last week scooped Sun Microsystems Inc’s Solstice flavour of network management, saying it will manufacture an integrated product combining CA-Unicenter with SunNet Manager, using CA-OpenIngres as the distributed management repository. Both companies will sell and support the product – which hasn’t been named – through their existing channels on Sun’s Sparc, iAPX-86 and PowerPC cut of Solaris (2.5). First implementations will be out by the end of the year. CA-Unicenter and SunNet Manager will be accessed through a single interface and the companies claim the two together will equal more than the sum of the individual parts. Pricing, set at $20,000 on Sparc, was still being finalised at the last minute, causing Sun chief Scott McNealy to do a double-take as he read his script: $20,000 on Sparc? Well the price has plummeted since I got out of the helicopter three minutes ago! he exclaimed. Other pieces of Solstice, including Co-operative Consoles and Enterprise Manager will be added to the bundle in future revisions and the two said they will be working to integrate a host of products over time under their wide-ranging agreement. They will accommodate a customers’ supplier preference where one exists and where their respective technologies overlap, in areas such as software distribution, will work with whatever a user already has, or let it make the choice. They will even work on non-CA-Ingres installations, but admit integration will be limited in these cases. CA-Unicenter is already available stand-alone on Solaris 2.3 and up. Computer Associates said it’s right to think of the CA-Unicenter-SunNet Manager bundle as the functional equivalent of its CA-Unicenter for HP OpenView product and claims channel issues required the creation of a new product name for the Hewlett-Packard Co work. Computer Associates expects further integration of systems and network management environments under one hood, with a single logical model for administrators the desired net result. IBM Corp’s NetView environment is, of course, the biggest network management fruit still on the tree, though IBM’s quickly wrapping it with its own SystemView management cloak. The company said it is talking to IBM about what they could do together, but wouldn’t comment on reports that reached us last week suggesting that a CA-Unicenter-NetView tie-up is already a done deal. The company, quickly ramping a $500m systems management business, is rapidly establishing CA-Unicenter as the de facto Unix industry standard, challenging the likes of Tivoli Systems Inc’s Tivoli Management Environment, supposedly the basis of X/Open Co Ltd’s embryonic systems management standard, and OpenVision Inc. Rival database houses Informix Corp, Oracle Corp and Sybase Inc all hang their hats on the Tivoli peg.
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