HP Announces HP OpenView Enterprise Solutions Now Manage Mission-Critical LAN-Based Environments That Include Novell NetWare and Windows NT Server

Business Wire, March 4, 1996

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 4, 1996-- Hewlett-Packard Company today announced it has expanded its network and system-management offerings with a comprehensive set of scaleable information-technology (IT) management products that will allow customers to take control of their mission-critical LAN environments. These include Windows NT and Novell NetWare.

As a result, customers now can manage their LAN environments from one integrated and centralized industry-leading management solution, which should decrease the cost of managing and increase the level of service provided to end users.

These new IT management solutions cover network, system, application and database management. They complement HP's existing strong support for UNIX(R) system- and Windows-based environments, and provide customers with one solution for managing an open and heterogeneous enterprise.

Today's announcement includes new Windows NT- and Novell NetWare-based agents for leading HP OpenView enterprise management solutions, including IT/Operations, MeasureWare, IT/Administration and OmniBack II. It also includes HP OpenView Solution Framework products that now are supporting Windows NT, such as HP OpenView Network Node Manager, among others. There also will be new integration between HP OpenView and management solutions that are provided by Novell and Symantec.

"This announcement demonstrates HP's commitment to helping customers more effectively manage their Windows NT, Novell NetWare and UNIX system environments," said Olivier Helleboid, general manager of HP's Network and System Management Division. "These HP OpenView solutions give customers the tools they need to better manage today's complex LAN environments. IT managers can now provide end users in Novell NetWare and Windows NT environments with the same high levels of service they now provide to other parts of the organization."

THE EMERGING NEED FOR MANAGEMENT OF MISSION-CRITICAL LAN ENVIRONMENTS

Previously limited to word processing, spreadsheet manipulation and other office functions, LAN-based applications now include critical business functions such as order processing, billing and manufacturing control. As a result, comprehensive local-management solutions are becoming more important to IT managers who now are being asked to manage the availability and performance of LAN-based applications, and facilitate the daily operations and on-going configuration of local systems and services.

IT managers today require a comprehensive solution that can address the broad and diverse set of LAN management challenges facing them. The HP solutions announced today will enable IT organizations to manage these environments from a consistent, integrated and industry-leading solution that now spans from the enterprise to the desktop.

"The mission-critical workgroup environment has arrived," said Patrick McBride, an analyst at the META Group. "As a result, the lifeblood of a business can be running on an Intel-based system thousands of miles away from corporate headquarters."

NEW HP OPENVIEW SOLUTIONS

New HP OpenView functionality is provided in three ways. The first way is through new Windows NT- and Novell NetWare-based agents for the following leading HP OpenView enterprise management solutions: IT/Operations, MeasureWare, IT/Administration, OpenSpool and OmniBack II.

"I'm pleased to see HP bring MeasureWare functionality to the Windows NT platform, which now provides the type of data we currently receive for our UNIX systems," said Ron Welf, manager of system performance and capacity planning at Charles Schwab & Co. "This brings us a step closer to correlating usage and performance information across the entire scope of network and system resources required by a distributed application."

"We are very excited about the announcement of HP to extend the management of HP OpenView IT/Operations to Windows NT," said Michael Zurheide, MIS Director for the Axel Springer Verlag AG publishing company. "Now we will be able to consolidate status information of our mission-critical applications regardless of the operating system environment -- UNIX or Windows NT. This will improve service quality for our end-users who work in a heterogeneous environment."

New functionality announced today extends beyond the LAN server to the individual desktop PC. For example, through IT/Administration's agent for Novell NetWare environments, administrators can access more than 120 items of inventory data about each client PC system and the software installed on it.

Additionally, today's announced agents and modules for Windows NT provide an opportunity for greater levels of integration between HP OpenView products and Microsoft(R) Systems Management Server, as part of the previously announced cooperation between HP and Microsoft.

"The on-going work between HP and Microsoft to provide integration between HP OpenView and Systems Management Server will provide benefits to our mutual customers," said Bob Kruger, general manager, Business Systems Division at Microsoft.