Now under the charge of Janpieter Scheerder, SunSoft Inc will rationalise its sometimes confusing array of products into three streams: Solaris, Solstice and WorkShop. First off, the company is splitting up SunNet Manager, so the next release of its Solstice Simple Network Management Protocol system, due in the second quarter of next year, will consist of separate offerings for the low end and mid-range of the market. Solstice Site Manager (SunNet Manager 2.2.3) will manage up to 100 nodes and cost from $2,000. Using the Co-operative Consoles system for managing changes across networks, Site Manager can pass event information up to Domain Manager, a second version of SunNet manager 2.2.3 that can handle up to 10,000 and costs from $10,000. Domain Manager can be configured to manage one large network or multiple Site Managers. Multiple Domain Managers can send and receive information between each other when used with Co-operative Consoles, Domain Manager can both send and receive event information. It also includes a layout tool for viewing and navigating through networks. Domain Manager will include the ability to import NetWare Management System topologies and distribute information to the NetLabs Inc-derived Enterprise Manager for managing more than 10,000 nodes, which tops SunSoft’s Solstice bill. Although it has been out at OEM customers since last year, Enterprise Manager, and the Nerve Centre event correlation system, also from NetLabs Inc, will not be available commercially until the second half of next year, at around $19,500. The company will describe the next version of Enterprise Manager, which is now able to run SunNet Manager Simple Network Management Protocol applications, on November 24 in Dallas. Next year the company promises a Desktop Management Taskforce and Simple Network Management Protocol common agent that will map Desktop Management Task Force’s Desktop Management Interface to Enterprise Manager’s Common Management Information Protocols and to the Object Group’s Common Object Request Broker Architecture in future. Computer Associates International Inc is integrating the Site and maybe also Domain managers with CA-Unicenter under its recent systems management deal with Sun (CI No 2,731). Sales of SunNet Manager have fallen behind Hewlett-Packard Co’s OpenView by about 1% this year, after enjoying a 0.5% lead in 1994. SunSoft claims that it currently has 30,000 fully operational SunNet Manager installations worldwide.
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