Boole & Babbage integrates Novell NetWare and UNIX management with Ensign; new intelligent agent adds availability management of NetWare servers to Ensign suite

Business Wire, Oct 23, 1995

Inc. (NASDAQ:BOOL), the leader in enterprise automation solutions for distributed systems, today announced Ensign Alarm Agent for Novell NetWare.

With this new agent, Ensign now provides centralized and distributed control of event and availability management and automation for multisite, multiplatform UNIX and Novell NetWare environments.

Through customizable intelligent agents, Ensign allows system administrators to monitor, automate and manage their UNIX environments from a central console.

With the addition of Ensign Alarm Agent for Novell NetWare, system administrators can now monitor both Novell NetWare and UNIX servers from the same console.

Ensign Alarm Agent for Novell NetWare provides round-the-clock surveillance and automatic corrective actions for critical NetWare processes, files and status conditions, thereby increasing NetWare server availability.

System administrators can also create custom alarms and scripts or modify predefined ones and distribute them from a common console.

"Most organizations today cannot afford the luxury of maintaining duplicate support teams, even in mixed environments," said Jill Huntington-Lee, market analyst at Datapro.

"Consolidating alarm management of UNIX and NetWare increases overall server availability. Ensign is one of the more easily deployable UNIX systems management consoles on the market today; with its new capability, Ensign customers now have a direct window into the NetWare environment as well."

"Offering complete enterprise automation is the cornerstone of the Boole & Babbage distributed systems management technology," said John Simpson, senior director of client/server products at Boole & Babbage.

"The new Ensign Alarm Agent for Novell NetWare enables our customers to blend event and availability management of their UNIX and NetWare servers. Console integration is key to managing large numbers of heterogeneous systems and Ensign now manages both UNIX and Novell environments under one console."

With an intelligent Ensign Alarm Agent, alarms can be profiled and distributed in groups or on a single system basis. System administrators can specify conditions within each alarm for monitoring system events.

For example, they can assign specific intervals for checking alarm conditions, ranging from one second to 24 hours; they can check severity levels, from informational to emergency; and they can automatically initiate corrective action.

System administrators can also assign which users should be notified through any combination of email, FAX, paging system or SNMP alerts.

Ensign can also now report alerts from UNIX and NetWare servers to Hewlett Packard's OpenView, IBM's SystemView, Sun's NetManager and Boole & Babbage's COMMAND/POST or any SNMP console.

Pricing and Availability

Ensign Alarm Agent for Novell NetWare will be available in November 1995. Pricing will begin at $500. Ensign Alarm Agent for Novell NetWare requires the installation of Ensign Alarm Manager version 1.3 or later. For more information, call 1-800/554-2152.

Boole & Babbage is a worldwide leader in enterprise automation solutions for managing distributed systems. The company works in partnership with customers to boost systems availability, reduce overall computing costs and strategically automate the entire IT enterprise. Through advanced interoperability, its proven solutions let customers gain proactive control of their distributed computing environments -- from mainframe to desktop and legacy to client/server. Boole & Babbage products complement Help Desk, data center operations, network and systems administration and storage management.

Boole & Babbage has 42 offices in 26 countries, including three data centers and four development labs. The company's products are available through direct channels and a worldwide network of distributors and resellers. -0-

NOTE TO EDITORS: Boole & Babbage is a registered trademark of Boole & Babbage Inc. Ensign is a trademark of Boole & Babbage Inc. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Boole & Babbage Inc., San Jose

Shelly Gordon, 408/526-3430

sgordon@boole.com