Stories by Dennis Drogseth

CA to buy NetQoS for $US200 million

CA has announced plans to acquire NetQoS for $US200 million, adding application-aware network and systems management products to the software maker's broad enterprise IT management portfolio.

Making big plans work (even when many of them don't)

Probably the single biggest thing that stood out to me as I reviewed our IT consulting guidance on CMDB System deployments, service catalog deployments, and plans for end-to-end application and service management strategies, is how consistent the reasons for failure are.

SolarWinds is doing something right

SolarWinds is an example of how dramatically lower price points and faster time to value are catching on in a sea of more complex, costly, and albeit usually more richly functional network management products.

The CMDB System, the CMS, the 'CCS' and the NOC

This third and last (I promise) in my series on CMDBs in the NOC probably should have been written first. Based on some feedback, I've decided to go back to square one and discuss EMA's (and my own) evolving perception of what a CMDB System is or at least should be in a little more detail - and then look at how the meaning of "CMDB" has itself changed, both within ITIL and within the industry.

What ever happened to network management?

Enterprise Management Associates is back again after a year of absence, this time on a monthly basis. We've really missed your dialog and comments, and hopefully we've been missed as well. As before, this column will focus on network management trends as they fit into the bigger IT management landscape - focusing from time to time on application performance, or SLM versus BSM, or new approaches to asset management, or trends like CMDB adoption as they may affect the NOC.

Cisco takes another plunge into network management

I remember when some Cisco executives positioned the company as a software vendor, not a hardware vendor - its R&D focused a lot more on IOS and other software than the networking hardware surrounding it. And to a large degree for better, and in some ways for worse (as constant updates could drive networking planners crazy), the software inside Cisco's networking devices has been a product and brand definer.

SNMP, CERT and media storms

On Feb. 12, I woke up to a USA Today article - top of the business section - on SNMP and, well, terrorism. For a moment I thought I was dreaming.

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