Open Source Weblog

Scheduled to be available in spring 2007, BridgeWays is being designed to manage Xandros, Red Hat, Solaris, Debian, Novell and Oracle Linux servers and desktops and will include server management, deployment management, systems monitoring and storage management capabilities.

It would be easy to suggest that Xandros is looking to differentiate itself from its Linux distribution rivals with its new management suite, but that will be easier said than done. Novell has Zenworks, and Mandriva has Pulse, for example, while Red Hat has announced plans to open source its core JBoss Operations Network code and intends to do the same with the Red Hat Network Satellite server.

When you consider that the enterprise systems management incumbents (IBM, CA, HP and BMC) are four of the biggest software businesses on the planet, you begin to wonder why everyone sees such an opportunity in systems management.

I put that question to Hyperic CEO, Javier Soltero, late last week and (as mentioned yesterday) he maintained that one of the differences enabled by the open source approach is that the company’s software gets in to the hands of IT administrators, rather than having to be sold by PowerPoint-wielding salesman to CIOs and IT directors.

“We operate on a very merit-based adoption cycle,” said Soltero. “It’s all about the person who’s closer to the problem. We’ve seen such a huge uptake in adoption because the value is well understood by the customer.”

As for the competitive threat posed by the Linux vendors, Soltero was unconcerned by Red Hat’s plans. “Red Hat and JBoss made that announcement about having the intent,” he said. “It will take a while for them to do that.”

Even then he maintains that there is a role for management specialists as customers want to see independence in their management provider. “You need a Switzerland and that’s the role we play in this process in that we have no particular allegiance to any technology in particular,” he said.