FRAMINGHAM (03/17/2000) - Two management software vendors are expanding their tool sets to give IT executives more options for managing their applications and network systems.
Tally Systems is overhauling its line of asset management software and adding features that will allow companies to track and analyze their hardware and software inventories, as well as remotely deploy and monitor software.
Separately, NTP Software is revamping its server management software, which monitors adherence to policies such as disk quotas, to ease installation and administration. NTP is also adding a software developers' kit that can be used to plug NTP management capabilities into applications.
Tally last Monday introduced TS.Asset for the in-depth analysis of corporate servers, PCs and software assets, and TS.Ready, which allows the electronic distribution and remote management of software. Tally also renamed all its products to reflect the "TS" name.
TS.Asset will allow IT executives to track cost, procurement, leasing, and license compliance on hardware and software, and analyze that data from a central repository. The software complements Tally's NetCensus, which tracks information such as what applications are running on what desktops. NetCensus has been renamed TS.Census.
Tally acquired the TS.Asset technology earlier this month when it purchased NetBalance and its IT Ledger software.
"What we're really doing with IT Ledger is managing total cost of ownership of our equipment," says Wyman Smith, a project manager at power company Dominion Resources in Richmond, Va. "The biggest bang for our buck is tracking leased equipment and returning it on time. We're able to identify where equipment is and where to find it when it needs to be returned."
Dominion Resources' Total Assessment Management System begins tracking equipment the minute it is shipped by the supplier and follows the gear from the warehouse to IT to the desktop and back again.
Tally plans to release a number of modules for TS.Asset to track such things as software license compliance.
"We now can examine the financial and legal data, not just the physical data," says Michael Gray, director of asset management products for Tally. "It's a more comprehensive view of assets that helps support business decisions."
Tally's TS.Ready is an OEM version of Swan International's Vision64, which supports the electronic distribution of software, remote control and application self-healing.
NTP revamps
NTP is also revamping its line of software by adding features that will help users support rollouts of Windows 2000 and Active Directory, and create a uniform application and messaging management infrastructure.
NTP later this month will ship the first product that includes its new Enterprise Application Services Extension (EASE), which supports centralized administration for all NTP management applications. NTP System Sentinel, which monitors server and application health on Windows NT 4.0 networks, will be the first product to include EASE.
NTP plans to add EASE to its other applications, including Quota Manager, RAS Manager and List Manager.
NTP is using EASE as a migration bridge to Win 2000. EASE is a Win 2000-like environment, so application management can be migrated to Active Directory if users upgrade their NT 4.0 servers.
"Some components, like user security and storage of application configurations, can be moved to Active Directory, while EASE will be used to collect management statistics," says Bruce Backa, president of NTP.
NTP also plans to make EASE available as a tool kit so developers can add features such as SNMP reporting, event management and e-mail integration to their applications. EASE is expected to ship in the second quarter, and the development kit will be available in the second half of the year.