Netwrk Management: IBM Announces Availability of Universal Management Agent. Delivers Powerful Network Manageability, Setting New Standards For Web-Based Enterprise Management Interoperability

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, August 10, 1998

IBM Wednesday announced the general availability of the IBM Universal Management Agent(UMA), a software product developed and delivered as part of IBM's Universal Management initiative to help customers better manage their IT investments and reduce costs throughout the life-cycle of PC-based assets.

IBM's Universal Management Agent is available to IBM customers free of charge on the Web at www.pc.ibm.com/us/desktop/uma.>Based on industry standards, UMA operates seamlessly with Intel's LANDesk ingredients and Services for Netfinity Manager 5.2 and runs on DMI and Wired for Management compliant desktop, mobile and server systems. UMA also supports upward integration modules for advanced management capabilities with Tivoli Enterprise and Tivoli NetView, the Microsoft Management Console and SMS 1.2.

"Our focus is on leveraging industry standards and making investments in delivering the most manageable products in the market," said David M. Thomas, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Personal Systems Group. "Today's announcement delivers creative, robust, and industry-leading solutions that our customers can implement without delay in their chosen management environments, providing advantages in building more effective and efficient businesses."

"By embracing industry standards, both Tivoli and IBM are able to quickly deliver industry-leading and robust manageability solutions for network, systems, and PC-based management solutions," said Tom Bishop, Tivoli Systems chief technology officer and vice president of development. "Through the 'Tivoli-Ready' initiative, Tivoli is working with many vendors, whose products run on various platforms, to enable their products to quickly and easily take advantage of Tivoli's Management software."

"Customers are demanding solutions that operate on a workgroup and enterprise level and do so with the management environment they have already chosen," said John Dunkle, president of Workgroup Strategic Services, Inc. "IBM's Universal Management Agent and Netfinity Manager are delivering this capability today and setting new integration standards that the competition has yet to approach. The potential benefits to IBM customers are tremendous." Universal Management Agent

UMA is a Web browser-based intelligent client management agent that allows systems administrators to support users from virtually anywhere. UMA joins Netfinity Manager, an IBM first-to-market product released over two years ago with Web-based management functionality. Customers benefit from both advances, which allow for new levels of access and efficiency through complete remote system via Web browser applications. UMA also features S.M.A.R.T. Reaction, which automatically backs up data and alerts systems administrators to an impending hard drive failure.

For example, a Tivoli management administrator may wish to perform a live "drill down" for more information on a Netfinity server, IBM ThinkPad, or perhaps an IBM IntelliStation workstation. Rather than operating the client-side management software piece, the administrator is able to access the UMA enabled client directly with a Web-browser launched seamlessly from Tivoli Netview. An administrator could also respond to a system failure alert by accessing the Web-enabled Netfinity Manager console with their Web-browser and invoke control of the Netfinity server using its remote service processor. This process allows a server to be brought back on line, from a home or other remote location instead of a specific console monitor.

Universal Management Agent is the third major solution, following Wake on LAN and Alert on LAN(1), to be delivered as part of the IBM/Intel Advanced Manageability Alliance, which draws on the industry-leading expertise of each company to reduce the complexity of installing and managing networked PCs.