Will PalmPilots Manage Big Iron?

FRAMINGHAM (04/04/2000) - Could big iron someday be controlled by little plastic? Maybe.

IBM Corp. last week released SNAPP, a PalmPilot application designed to configure and manage the massive RS/6000 B50 servers commonly used by Internet service providers and application service providers.

Short for System Networking, Analysis and Performance Pilot, SNAPP can check system performance, configure systems and manage Web servers. The application allows a PalmPilot to communicate with the servers through the server's serial port. The personal digital assistant and the server exchange commands using XML. The application can also be extended to support other command and configuration options, a spokesman said.

If the initial release is successful, IBM developers will likely add support for larger systems, an IBM spokesman said. RS/6000 administrators can download SNAPP from IBM's Web site.