Originally a DEC shop (now Compaq), over the last five or six years the ASX has added new platforms as its server numbers have ballooned to more than 300. It now runs VMS, Solaris and Windows. On the network side it has more than 400 routers and switches from Cisco and Nortel. The ASX has developed a number of different trading applications and has recently invested significantly in its Internet presence. Indeed 10 to 20 per cent of its servers have been incorporated as part of its Internet environment. Meanwhile, its storage requirements and need for greater IO throughput have seen the ASX implement a cutting-edge storage area network from Compaq.
In order to manage such a heterogenous operating environment, the ASX has chosen to try and bring all these various components together under a single management platform. The ASX has invested heavily in Computer Associates' TNG Unicentre with that goal in mind and is currently in the process of integrating all its management data together under that platform.
"As the number of components have expanded dramatically over the last couple of years it has required more and more manpower to effectively manage the environment," Olsson said. "Even more critically though, it has made it difficult to achieve a holistic view of the infrastructure which you really need to have in order to be able to view the infrastructure from a business or customer perspective. "That's important because our aim is not to deliver technology, it's to deliver solutions to business problems. So what's important to me is not the uptime on any particular CPU, it's how consistently our systems are meeting our customer requirements," he said.
"That's what we've been able to achieve with our Unicentre implementation, we can look at 30 or 40 elements as one business-focused view of the infrastructure."