Tivoli Systems Inc has finally got its act together and announced the first phase of the integration of the Tivoli Management Environment with IBM Corp’s OS/390 mainframe operating system. Tivoli product manager for the systems 390 management software, Glenda Lyon says the integration has taken longer than the company intended when it was bought by IBM in 1996. But she argues the Tivoli wanted to ensure everything ran perfectly. The company has developed some new products specifically for OS/390, but Lyon admits a lot of the so-called new offerings are based on Systems View, IBM’s old predominantly mainframe-based systems management offering. Last year Tivoli reached the $1bn mark in terms of revenues and is looking to build still further on that figure this year. According to Lyon, speaking at the company’s opening of its new research and development laboratory in Rome this week, Tivoli wants to increase its market share to between 50 and 60% this year. If this is to be the case, the company will generate an additional $2.1bn in revenue from OS/390 related products alone. When Computergram put this to Lyon she later admitted this is only what the company would like to see and there is no real chance it will happen in the foreseeable future. Tivoli will be competing head on with arch rival Computer Associates Inc, which gives some of its products away for free, such as the Unicenter TNG framework. Lyon said Tivoli is currently not in the practice of giving software away for free, but said the company will be offering customers special deals. Details were not divulged. In order to increase its market share, Tivoli is placing emphasis on the establishment of a dedicated OS/390 sales force. At the beginning of last year there was no such infrastructure, but today there are 70 staff in the US and the company will build a similar team in Europe, aiming to have 35 to 50 staff in place by the end of the year. Services also play a part in this model, and Tivoli this year plans to increase its migration consultants by 200%, and will expand the product line. Tivoli is full of cheer at the moment, exaggerated by Tivoli Rome Laboratory director David Bartlett, who says he views Tivoli best when it is spelt backwards; I LOV IT. But it remains to be seen whether Tivoli can achieve what it is claiming it will be able to do with OS/390. This week marks the first of a series of announcements for TME and OS/390. Tivoli will continue with functional enhancements to its usability with the use of Java and finally complete integration with TME 10 by the end of the year.
