n A Fragmented Market: It is now a well-known fact that various tools and capabilities are required to manage and control security, information resources, software, storage, device monitoring, traffic congestion, business, and performance among many things. There are both free tools as well as tools from leading vendors. There are point solutions and there are framework solutions. Also since, there are different elements involved, there are different products. In such a scenario, the market is highly fragmented. Besides products, there are services too. The Indian market is still at infancy. It would take about another two-three years before large-scale deployments happen. Nonetheless, there are deployments for complex management.

n Solutions: A quick look at the market indicates that product offerings are targeted at various layers and functions. At the network layer functions handled include fault monitoring, alarm correlation, fault management, event handling, etc. And it is controlled by network management platforms. These could be products like HP Openview that can manage products from different vendors to those like Enterasys Netsight Atlas, CiscoWorks and Nortel’s Optivity and also act like a manager of managers for the network to those like CiscoWorks and Nortel’s Optivity which manage their own products in the networks.

Then, the enterprise layer manages systems management and network management for functions like QoS, security management, storage management, and fault measurement.

n Horses for Courses: Today, with customer satisfaction and RoI becoming important, pricing and quick deployment is becoming important. That is why one sees framework vendors like Computer Associates, Tivoli, and HP moving fast to address the scenario. CA came up with a modular version of its flagship Unicenter offering. Now one can purchase modules as they grow. Similarly, Enterasys has Netsight Atlas targeted at large corporations, midsize companies, and service providers as part of its solution. HP consolidated its OpenView offerings by bringing in the TeMIP framework under the OpenView umbrella. With this consolidated network operations system, one can choose the right modules to manage both data and voice side of a carrier too. Meanwhile, point product vendors like Micromuse, Lucent, and Concord offer integrated software for network, performance and systems management, and integrate out of the box.

n Prices Keep Varying: Lucent’s VitalSuite starts at about $50,000. As mentioned earlier, vendors are carrying integrated software modules for monitoring network activity, ensuring service-level agreement (SLA) compliance, tracking network performance, and watching over applications and their transactions. Take for example the VitalSuite, it consists of VitalNet, VitalAnalysis, VitalHelp, VitalAgent, AutoMon and Transact Toolkit. Similarly, look at Concord. It eHealth suite consists of Network Health, Live Health, System Health and Application Health modules. Most of the vendors have suite of products.

n Market Size: The market in India is very fragmented. According to IDC, the network and service management opportunity globally will increase from $3.03 billion in 2001 to $4.94 billion in 2006, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.3 percent.

According to Gartner Dataquest report, global IT spending at the end of 2002 remains in a slump and the enterprise management market remained flat. The revenue streams for the network and systems management (NSM) vendors were flat or declining. According to the study, the NSM industry shrunk 5 percent in 2001, compared to 7 percent growth in 2000.

n License Revenues Drop: New license revenue in 2001 was $6.9 billion and IBM was the only one of the top four vendors—BMC Software, Computer Associates, Hewlett-Packard and IBM—to see growth. Gartner says IBM grew by starting to offer management for mainframe database management systems (DBMS). The Gartner study showed that CA held 6.8 percent of the NSM market in 2001, while BMC jumped ahead with 8 percent and IBM led the group with 18.8 percent. BMC dropped 26 percent in new license revenue. CA saw new license revenue drop 76 percent. HP lost 15 percent with its OpenView software portfolio.

EXPERTS PANEL Anil Kumar Jannu, vice-president (India and Asia-Pacific), Vinciti Networks Gururaj Kanade, chief technology officer, Network Solutions Kallol Hazra, practice principal (telco and NSP), HP Consulting & Integration Services Sunil Bhatt, chief technology officer, Allied Digital Services Uday Birje, country manager (India and SAARC), Enterasys Networks

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