Tivoli Systems Inc has been allied with Intel Corp for the past year in an effort to close the management gap between its enterprise tools and Intel’s local area network tools. As part of the alliance, Tivoli licensed pieces of Intel’s LANDesk desktop management system to include in Tivoli Management Environment. The two companies will continue to work on joint development projects. Tivoli has licensed two elements in the LANDesk family: its discovery agents, to be used in an inventory product, and its installation technology, which will be used to distribute software to desktops. Intel has provided technical support to Tivoli for the Windows NT release of Tivoli Management Environment due this year and helped Tivoli adopt the Desktop Management Task Force’s Desktop Management Interface; Intel will help market the product. Tivoli looks to its partnership with Intel to help it move into the Windows NT market, specifically the workgroup and local area network segment, while Intel could gain a stronger hold on the enterprise through the management environment. The collaborators claim the local area network management market is ripe with potential; only 4% to 8% of all personal computers have desktop management systems and those are supplied primarily by antivirus companies such as McAfee Associates Inc and Symantec Corp. The new products could either be bundled with the Tivoli Management Environment or treated as modules.
Yogesh Gupta
They are expected to roll out by the end of this year and during the first quarter of next year. More on the phased implementation is expected to be announced in a few weeks. Tivoli is looking at how it might use other pieces of LANdesk, and is investigating integration at a higher level. Intel has an existing systems management deal with Computer Associates International Inc (which it originally struck with Legent Corp), but Computer Associates senior vice-president of product strategy Yogesh Gupta said the Tivoli and Computer Associates deals are different. Tivoli is using pieces of Intel’s LANDesk, while Computer Associates is making sure that Unicenter integrates with the Intel system architecture. Gupta did not see the Tivoli-Intel pact having much impact on the marketplace because customers looking at LANDesk know it is being integrated with Unicenter. He expressed surprise that it took so long for Tivoli to announce it, saying They shouldn’t have waited until the end of 1995. Gupta puts Microsoft Corp’s LANDesk and systems management server in the same category, although he conceded they do different things, because they do not interfere with Unicenter’s core business. Computer Associates is still working on integrating with the Desktop Management Interface. Gupta said the Intel technology is useful to Computer Associates because it focuses on hardware, while Computer Associates focuses on software integration. Meantime, Tivoli will market Unison Software Inc’s job scheduling software for use with its management environment.
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