Microsoft Corp is moving 20 development staff, formerly with Guildford, Surrey-based Network Managers Ltd, to the US, to work on the products to which the Redmonder has just acquired the intellectual property rights (CI No 2,704). Network Managers Centre Vision will integrated into BackOffice server software and the developers, now Microsoft staff, will continue to work on that, and other products the company is taking; so far, the developers have made it to Winnersh, Berkshire, M icrosoft’s UK home. Network Managers will license its former products back from Microsoft, with which it has been working on network management since 1993, and will become a value-added reseller of them. It sold the rights to all its software because it was just too small to compete against Hewlett-Packard Co with OpenView, and Sun Microsystems Inc with Solstice in the world of network management. Hewlett-Packard’s marketing budget for OpenView last year was larger than Network Managers’ turnover. Its business now will include consultancy services – around 40% of last year’s turnover was in this field – and it will also continue to develop software for network management on its own account.
