Managing the elements - Industry Trend or Event

Software Magazine, March, 1997 by Deborah Radcliff

Vendors of element hardware have gained a foothold on the software side with new device management tools. Can the sultans of switches, routers and hubs give the big network framework guys a run for their money?

With many of today's LANs and WANs go- ing global, networking devices are spreading farther into the outer limits. Switches, routers and hubs are often tucked away in unmanned closets, separated from trained IS staff by floors, states and sometimes countries. True, switches and routers have reached a level of reliability such that they can generally be counted on to quietly police and direct network traffic. But anyone who thinks the reliability of these hardware devices eliminates the need for tight management and monitoring is sadly mistaken. Count on occasional power failures, traffic jams, or suspect router activity that would indicate a hacker at work. IS shops need to proactively monitor these stalwart devices, using tools that alert network managers before users flood the phone lines with calls for help.

In the past, the systems and network management space has been dominated by the big framework guys. Leading network management frame- works provide topical monitoring, such as locating a given switch or router on the network, catching traffic flow information and sounding alarms. But IS leaders needing deeper reporting, graphical device viewing, remote configuration and per- formance monitoring aren't turning to the framework guys. They're calling their network hardware vendors. Over the past few years, these vendors -- particularly Cisco Systems, Bay Networks, 3Com and Cabletron -- have been making inroads into the systems and network management space, and in some cases, they're giving the Hewlett-Packards and IBMs a run for their money.

A major PC upgrade and a resulting bandwidth log- jam forced Dallas-based Snelling & Snelling Inc. to revamp its switching and routing devices two years ago. "We went from IBM 386s to Pentium 90s in one step. I now supported PCs that could crank out numbers 10 times faster. All of a sudden, my bandwidth went down the toilet," says Bob Coffel, network manager for the $270 million agency, which provides temporary employees to clients. "I bought Bay Networks' 28115 switches and 5000 hubs to create 26 subnets to divide my collisions on the network without using separate servers." Coffel's four-office LAN now runs smoothly, thanks to four 5000 chassis and 28115 Ethernet switches, 100 2813 Ethernet hubs, and eight ASN stackable and 25 AN edge routers, all of which are Bay products.

Then Coffel had to decide how they would manage these devices and others to come when they connect the WAN to offices in suburban Chicago and Omaha later this year. Coffel again called Bay. He purchased Bay's Optivity LAN 7.0 for Unix, a $6,000 server-based suite, and tied it into Sun Microsystems' SunNet Manager in Snelling's control center. Though Coffel keeps his network hardware proprietary for simplicity, he still takes advantage of Bay's integrated GUI, switching configuration and traffic control capabilities, and customized reporting and alarms. "Almost any management platform can trap the errors in routers. Using Optivity I'm able to gather statistics and watch per-port traffic to any device on the network. If I have a subnet that's using too much bandwidth, I can move it. If my Ethernet statistics go up to 60%, I get alarms," he explains. Bay and other vendors of routing, switching and similar element hardware have been quietly positioning themselves in the software arena with device management tools that are now surpassing element management capabilities found in leading network management frameworks. Says Ray Paquet, research director of platforms and operations software at the Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Group, "Over the last year, there's been a renewed interest in the distributed device management market. One might argue that it's due to lack of development by the big players such as HP [OpenView] and IBM [NetView and Tivoli TME 10]."

Most of these hardware vendors are gaining their software technology through acquisition. Over the past few years, hardware and software vendors have been merging in droves. Last February, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Bay Networks bought Armon, developer of hardware probes and software applications for remote monitoring, for $33 million in cash. The following month, 3Com, also based in Santa Clara, acquired remote management and networking company Axon Networks Inc., for $60.2 million cash plus 3.7 million in stock options.

For its part, San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Systems Inc., a $4.1 billion router-turned-networking vendor, has snatched up 14 network management, integration and Internet software companies since 1993, spending $5.5 billion. Cisco has leveraged the expertise of these com-panies to offer a range of management products, including a graphical interface called CiscoView, Windows and Unix versions of a configuration and diag- nostic called CiscoWorks, and NetSys systems manager.