• Sidebar: Monitoring Heterogeneous Environments with Operations Manager

The recent acquisition of Engyro boosts Microsoft's quest to transform Operations Manager—the company's product for monitoring the health of Windows-based computers, OS services, and applications—into a platform for monitoring heterogeneous IT environments. Engyro's products allow Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 and Operations Manager (OM) 2007 to monitor a variety of non-Windows OSs and applications, and integrate MOM 2005 and OM 2007 with other system management products. However, this move comes as a blow to partners selling products that compete with Engyro's and portends a battle between Microsoft and major enterprise system management (ESM) vendors, such as BMC and IBM.

As with Microsoft's acquisitions of Connectix (Virtual PC/Virtual Server), Sybari (Antigen), and Softricity (SoftGrid), the Engyro acquisition shows how Microsoft is not afraid to disrupt partners serving a particular niche in the Windows marketplace by picking a "winner."

OM 2007 and Heterogeneous Environments

Most of Microsoft's larger customers must manage heterogeneous environments that include network devices (routers, managed switches, etc.), Windows-, Unix- and Linux-based computers and applications, and even mainframe computers and applications. ESM software—multifunctional and integrated solutions designed for monitoring, inventorying, and for making, tracking, and recording changes to heterogeneous environments—have existed for over a decade. The major players include BMC's Patrol and Remedy, Computer Associates' Unicenter, EMC's Smarts, Hewlett-Packard's OpenView and Service Desk, and IBM's Tivoli.

However, these products are costly and complex. Furthermore, because none of these products have reached critical mass in the marketplace, application developers and hardware vendors (other than those in companies that offer the ESM products) have not been very interested in designing their products for management by any specific ESM product and in building the specific files that configure the ESM software to monitor their product. This means the customer or integrator must do extensive and expensive customization to get an ESM product working properly and productively.

At present, unlike these ESM vendors, Microsoft's current management products are tailored primarily for managing Windows OS services and Windows applications, and in that role OM seems to be both better and more economical than the ESM products. It's also the only monitoring solution for which Microsoft's own product groups develop management packs (MPs). These are files readable by the OM monitoring software that encapsulate the operational knowledge needed to determine whether the products are running properly, accurately identify problems that require human intervention, and help correct problems encountered. Furthermore, unlike the ESM products, OM enjoys support from some third-party vendors who build and include MPs for their products.

However, Microsoft recognized that OM could not remain an isolated point solution in mixed environments and architected the product to provide heterogeneous support in two ways. First, although Microsoft added a Web services-based interface to aid bidirectional communication between OM and third-party ESM products, additional components are still necessary to link OM with these products, and these components are built by the ESM vendors or by third parties. Second, Microsoft enabled third parties to create extensions that allow OM to monitor non-Windows OSs and devices directly. (For further details, see the sidebar "Monitoring Heterogeneous Environments with Operations Manager".)

Engyro had products that fit into both of these niches, making it a logical acquisition to help Microsoft extend OM's capabilities in heterogeneous environments.

Plans for the Engyro Products

Microsoft picked up two major product families with the acquisition:

• Engyro Monitoring Components for MOM 2005, which consist of agents and MPs that enable MOM 2005 to monitor Apache, HP-UX, IBM AIX, IBM DB2, Oracle DB, Red Hat Linux, Solaris, SUSE Linux, and VMware ESX directly
• Engyro Product Connector Suites, which allow MOM 2005 and OM 2007 to exchange data with BMC Remedy, FrontRange Heat, HP OpenView/Service Desk, and IBM Tivoli.

While Microsoft plans to suspend sale of the existing Engyro Monitoring Components for MOM 2005 (agents and MPs), the company has pledged to support them through the end of the MOM 2005 support cycle (2010). Although Microsoft has not revealed its future plans for the Engyro Monitoring Components, it seems clear that they constitute the biggest asset it received in the deal, and Microsoft will undoubtedly update them and offer them with OM 2007 or its successor.

Microsoft also plans to suspend sales of the Connector Suites for MOM 2005 but support them through 2010. Microsoft will, however, continue to sell the Engyro-branded Connectors for OM 2007, and existing Engyro MOM 2005 Connector Suite customers can upgrade for free to the OM 2007 Connectors. Longer term, the current plan is that Microsoft-branded connectors will be shipped as technology components with the next versions of OM and Service Manager.

For the immediate future, Engyro will exist as a Microsoft subsidiary. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, nor has Microsoft stated its plans for Engyro's Cincinnati, OH, offices and employees.

Step Toward ESM, Blow to Partners

Adding native heterogeneous device monitoring capabilities is critical for OM to become a player in the ESM market and to meet the goals of Microsoft's Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI). A main goal of DSI is to model the interdependencies of all system components so that future versions of OM can accurately perform root-cause problem determination and automatically remediate problems whenever possible. To do this, OM must monitor all components in the system. Furthermore, OM customers would like to eliminate the need to integrate add-ons from other vendors or manage multiple monitoring systems.

Along with the Engyro acquisition, several other recent developments signal Microsoft's intent to make its Systems Center family of management products a force in the ESM market. For example, in Apr. 2007, Microsoft announced a deal with EMC to license some of EMC's Smarts technology for monitoring network devices, and plans to include this technology in the next release of OM. In addition, the forthcoming Service Manager 2008, planned for the first half of 2008, will be Microsoft's first product to perform incident management and will integrate tightly with OM 2007. As Microsoft rolls out Service Manager and future OM releases containing the EMC Smarts technology and the Engyro agents for non-Windows platforms, the big ESM vendors may see some of their installed base begin jumping ship for the Microsoft ESM solution.

Finally, although the Engyro acquisition will have little immediate impact on Microsoft's OM partners, it portends a gloomy future for eXc, JalaSoft, and Quest, each of which offers products that provide similar functionality to the Engyro Monitoring Components. Yet, it's not clear how much MP development Microsoft will do for non-Windows platforms; Microsoft could provide only infrastructure and basic monitoring capabilities and depend on its partners to develop more sophisticated MPs. If true, this could provide ongoing opportunities for these vendors.

Resources

A deep analysis of Operations Manager 2007 can be found in "Operations Manager 2007 Explored" on page 12 of the June 2007 Update.

Packaging and pricing information on Operations Manager 2007 can be found in "Operations Manager 2007 Packaging, Licensing, Pricing" on page 22 of the June 2007 Update.

Microsoft's licensing of EMC Smarts Technology is described in "Network-Device Management Partnership" on page 12 of the May 2007 Update.