Speaking of behemoths, Microsoft is expanding its IT management role under a new brand, called System Center, which will be a portfolio of systems-management products based around Microsoft extensions to ITIL. The goal is to provide better integration of Microsoft management products.
The company has announced that existing management products will be rebranded under the System Center name. For instance, SMS will be renamed System Center Configuration Manager. Microsoft also will launch a new product under the System Center umbrella, code-named Service Desk, that will include a CMDB to support change and configuration management. A public beta of Service Desk is scheduled for release in the first half of this year.
Microsoft's move to enter the market is significant, but we expect little detrimental effect on the major vendors in this space--in fact, Redmond could help them by exposing midmarket and smaller customers to the CMDB concept. Microsoft's management products tend to focus on the Windows OS and Microsoft applications. The company will have to work hard to establish its credibility as an all-purpose IT management provider. That said, other vendors will ensure that adapters or connectors to pull data from Service Desk into their own CMDB platforms are readily available.
Opsware comes at the CMDB from the data center automation market. This month it plans to announce its Operational Management Database (OMDB), which will be incorporated into each product in the company's suite; general availability is expected at the end of the first quarter. OMDB will not be available as a standalone product in its first release.
OMDB provides all the common features of a CMDB, including CIs on network devices, servers and applications and the ability to map application dependencies. It allows data center managers to take action on CIs by invoking processes available within the product suite. But because it's available only within Opsware products, the OMDB isn't competing against standalone CMDBs. Rather, Opsware positions it as a crucial element of data center automation and as a third-party data store that can be federated with other CMDBs.
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