Zenoss, which develops open source IT management software, released a new version of Zenoss Enterprise that added virtualization and SNMP v3 support. The new version adds several enterprise capabilities for network, server, and application management, including the discovery and monitoring of virtual servers and new application monitors. Also announced are new networking management capabilities, including predictive thresholds and support for SNMPv3.

Zenoss can discover networked IT resources and monitor them for performance and availability. Zenoss also tracks changes through a configuration management database and provides a nonenterprise edition available for free.

If an organization is interested in an alternative to the enterprise software vendors and can tolerate the reliance on open source, it is worth looking at the Zenoss feature comparison. Often smaller organizations will be able to innovate much faster than large organizations and may provide capabilities missing from larger vendors.

Is open source the answer to IT management? Too early to say, but vendors like Zenoss sure will make it interesting.