Embarking on its second life, Houston, Texas-based NuView Inc announced a technology alliance with Dell Computer Corp on Wednesday for Windows NT Cluster management software. Dell is to license NuView’s ClusterX software, as a component of its OpenManage systems management strategy. The deal follows a similar announcement the week before with Data General Corp.
NuView was founded in 1996 by Rahul Mehta, whose previous company, data access, reporting and data conversion utilities outfit Software Interfaces Inc, was one of the many firms acquired by Platinum Technology Inc in 1995 (CI No 2,657). Less than two years on, Hewlett-Packard Co stepped in and acquired ManageX, NuView’s centralized management platform for distributed NT-based environments, for around $100m. At the time it looked like the end for NuView, which was a one-product, 20-person company, and Mehta spent some time with HP as a consultant with HP’s OpenView division.
Now Mehta and NuView are back with a new product. Announced in November of last year and shipping this quarter, ClusterX is an application and configuration management system aimed exclusively at NT clusters. It includes tools for cluster configuration, administration and status, clustered application setup, auditing, diagnostics, and disaster recovery and load balancing. It works with Microsoft Exchange, MSCS (Wolfpack) and SQL Server, SAP AG R/3 applications and Oracle Corp databases. NuView says the cluster market is growing at twice the rate of the overall NT server market, and should reach around $8bn in annual revenues by 2001, if International Data Corp figures are to be believed.
Dell claims to be the first vendor to license the full-featured version of ClusterX for clusters and system area networked configurations of its PowerEdge servers. Dell is also collaborating with NuView on other software tools and enhancements to ClusterX to optimize performance and availability. It says it will make the software available later this year, and bundle copies with all server clusters supporting either SCSI or fibre channel connectivity, in an effort to simplify the process of building and managing clusters. PowerEdge servers already come with HP OpenView’s Network Node Manager, and NuView’s former product, HP ManageX, pre-installed for system, network, application and operating system management. Cluster X connects to OpenView, Tivioli, CA-Unicenter and other systems management packages via SNMP.
Data General will also pre-install a limited version of ClusterX on its Cluster-in-a-Box server, and says it will also market and resell the full edition of ClusterX, with service and support, through its Microsoft Authorized Support Centers. NuView promises more deals in the near future.
