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F E A T U R E

2003 Survivor's Guide to Network & Systems Management

December 15, 2002
By Bruce Boardman

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Standards Freeze

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	In this article
	Introduction
	Quality of Experience
	Standards Freeze
	Correlating the Kitchen Sink
	Companies to Watch
	Down But Not Out
	Web Links

Although management-standards work is moving at a glacial pace because of the economic downturn, it's important to remember that standards adoption is always deliberate and appears even slower relative to the frenetic pace of product-marketing campaigns. Development, what there is of it, is focused on meeting customers' needs, not long-term standards support.

One hot spot: The DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force) recently announced its CIM (Common Information Model)-compliance testing suite--even glaciers melt (see dmtf.org/standards/certification.php).

The IETF SNMPconf working group has finished a configuration MIB, however, it's bogged down in IETF politics, even though most of the work has been done for a year. If adopted by vendors, the common interface can provide multivendor security and DiffServ (Differentiated Services) as well as other network configuration applications.

We think the "greener grass" syndrome may be distracting the IETF away from SNMPconf to XML. At last July's meeting of the IETF a BOF (birds of a feather) group on using XML to create a common back end for programmatic configuration was discussed (see http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf-announce/Current/msg19628.html). Initially referred to as XMLconf, it is now forming as--pucker up--the LEMONADE (License to Enhance Messaging-Oriented Network Access for Diverse Endpoints) working group.

Our crystal ball is fuzzy when it comes to changes going on in this area. Short term, take a wait and see approach: Use focused products like AlterPoint and look for some of our reviews to help you sort out differences in the coming year.

Enlarging the Realm

The network is not the only place configuration and control management are gaining ground. Vendors also want to automate management of the systems that live on these networks. The backbone of this category is desktop-control applications, such as those from Altiris and Symantec, that gather inventory, create and install software images, and repair and meter software. This is a mature area that has heated up primarily because of the asset control these products provide: Asset control equals cost control.

Support for new devices, such as handhelds and PIMs (personal information managers), is being added as well. Microsoft has announced that the next release of SMS will support WinCE, but Altiris, Novadigm and Marimba have that and Palm support to boot.

Leading in the opposite direction, Marimba is managing server deployments and change management. A longstanding discipline in mainframe shops, the technology to control changes of client/server multitier computing is being delivered inside and outside the raised floor.