Rochester, New Hampshire-based Cabletron Systems Inc has announced version 4.0 of its network and systems management system, the Spectrum Enterprise Manager. The headlining enhancement is that it has been converted to work under Microsoft Windows NT – although this was originally promised for a year ago (CI No 1,409). Joe Massey, Cabletron’s director of platform development, denied that technological problems had delayed the NT implementation, saying there was a strategic decision to push it back. Earlier in the life cycle of NT, Microsoft was getting some bad raps, he said. Customers were shying away from [NT]. That time is passed, he added, and the company feels it has hit the sweet spot in terms of demand. Although the company is converting all its Spectrum applications for NT – 65 in total – it has yet to persuade any of its Spectrum partners to do so. Of the partners he has talked to, said Massey, Some have expressed strong interest and others are adopting a wait and see approach. Cabletron is not committing itself to implementing Spectrum for any other systems, but two at least seem to be out of consideration: the company is developing a Spectrum Management Gateway Server for NetWare (in beta test and due to appear in the first quarter next year) making a version for NetWare somewhat redundant; and, disturbingly for IBM Corp, OS/2 is out, since Cabletron sees no demand for it. I haven’t seen a request come across my desk in the last 12 months, said Massey. Also new with version 4.0 are capabilities that the company claims enable the management of an entire enterprise from a single server and which provide a single view of the enterprise across multiple servers. Administrators can also view, or receive alarms on, all router, server, database, or application problems, said Cabletron, a process that can be automated to enable remedial action without human intervention. This process can also be used over the Internet, to provide administrators with reporting at remote locations using the World Wide Web, the company added. Finally, Case-Based Reasoning, enabling applications to respond to alerts based on how they were dealt with in the past, has also been incorporated, as has the ability to export data to Oracle Corp databases. There are no pricing details as yet. Cabletron is also planning management services for its new SecureFast Virtual Networking product line: more details will be released over the winter.
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