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Open Source Blog
Open source management: the next big thing?
May 03, 2006
You can tell a market segment has momentum when you write an article about it and by the time it gets published new players have already emerged to expand it. Such is the case with the open source systems management market, which is expanding at a rapid pace.
My recent article looked at the rise of open source in the infrastructure management space and tried to identify some of vendors and projects that it was worth keeping an eye on.
Since the article was completed, several new players have come to our attention, joining the list of five "ones to watch" identified in the article.
In addition to the original five (Qlusters, GroundWork, Nagios, Centeris, and OpenNMS) the following are also worth a mention:
Emu Software - which offered its NetDirector configuration management software under an open source license in early April and this week announced a partnership with Novell certifying the product with its SUSE Linux products.
Zenoss - which launched its open source systems management project in February and last month added the ability to monitor servers running Microsoft Windows using Microsoft's Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) protocol.
Webmin - the web-based interface for system administration.
Ayamon - the services firm set up by Nagios creator Ethan Galstad.
SplunkForge - the community project of data centre troubleshooting firm Splunk, which is currently offline but due to relaunch (and rumoured to be expanded) soon.
openSIMS - Qluster CTO William Hurley's other project, which relaunched last month and has the support of symbiot.
The great thing about all these projects, as they mature, is how they can all come together to create a large, enterprise-scale systems and network management solution, but are all independent of each other, and do not require the commitment from a customer to throw out existing investments or move wholesale to a new framework.
That way each project/company can work on their own niche areas of expertise, while ensuring through integration that they can present a combined whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The open source model means that any gaps in expertise or lack of integration will soon be filled if there is demand.
At the same time, customers are free to choose just one of the components to complement their existing systems management products, avoiding the one-size-fits-all approach offered by the systems management vendors like BMC, CA, HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli.
Well, that's the theory. It will be interesting to see how these relationships evolve over time and if open source systems and network management can fulfil that potential.
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