Turnkey MSPs that offer a complete enterprise system management solution include SilverBack, TriActive, Totality, and InteQ. For its part, StrataSource manages an entire application. While such providers get much of their technology from traditional vendors, such as Micromuse, BMC, and Computer Associates, the MSPs add value through their technology and processes.
While the software is often installed at the client site, the MSP vendor is responsible for implementation, maintenance, and ongoing use. In most cases, the MSP staff is located off-site, with secure connections to customer hardware.
Small and medium-sized enterprises with 50 to 300 servers are best suited to turnkey MSPs. Larger organizations would find them too costly because they have greater scalability and customization requirements, which bring high failure potential.
However, for small and mid-sized businesses, turnkey MSPs will likely expand their offerings to include Internet- enabling infrastructure functions such as load balancing, cache management, and content distribution.
For its part, the Internet MSP is a subscription service of three, six, or nine months, whereby companies pay a monthly service fee for the management of a specific aspect of systems or applications, such as Internet monitoring or content delivery.
This is what most people refer to when talking about a management service provider.
Designed to manage and run over the Internet, these quick-to-install MSPs provide high functionality, although they are not appropriate for all functions. As their name implies, Internet MSPs primarily focus on managing Internet-based applications.
They offer such functions as monitoring, storage, security, end-user self- help, and marketing.
These MSPs tend to sell to two camps. The first, classical example, is that of mature companies that understand what they do not know, as well as what it takes to run an IT organization, including hardware, and a network infrastructure. Here, MSPs are dealing with technical folks. The second customer camp consists of dot.coms, which are small, or do not realize they cannot do it themselves. In this case, business rather than technical people are generally involved.
Internet MSPs usually offer a service that is based on point tools that target a single management concern. Internet MSPs use brand-new technology and applications that were built to exploit the Internet. They target E- business applications, and require little or no technology to be deployed internally. Because customers need not buy and install large frameworks or applications, Internet MSPs offer a low barrier to entry, and low cost.
Internet MSPs offer specific services. For example, Keynote, Freshwater, Luminate, and Mercury Interactive provide infrastructure monitoring and testing. They can generally view application performance from outside, simulating the users’
perspective. Internet MSPs also provide security testing, software maintenance, and external storage networks for storing and managing data.
As for the disadvantages, Internet MSPs are “very niche”; that is, all the functionality is not there yet. While they provide application and server management, they do not offer software distribution or help-desk functions, although broader functionality is expected in the future. In addition, use of a framework limits the number of vendors with which a company must work. Because the MSP space is new, companies might have to deal with more vendors, for example, to attain network performance functions in addition to infrastructure monitoring.
Some analysts anticipate the development of “integration MSPs,” which will allow ISPs and ASPs to share real-time infrastructure events and alarms with their customers. If, as some believe, data gathering is becoming a commodity, MSPs must differentiate themselves from competitors. To do so, MSP vendors such as Ganymede, Luminate, and Manage.com are giving away a tool or service to gain
customers. The free tools monitor an element or process, allowing IT departments to try them out. The MSPs hope that these organizations will then become customers and start using their other services, such as data integration.
Another approach to MSPs is that offered by service providers, which add management tools to their contracted service offerings. Operating on a subscription basis, these providers focus on performance monitoring, and delivering to service level agreements. However, flexibility is an issue because they only offer a few standard configurations.
As ISPs and ASPs become commodities, they must distinguish themselves from the competition. To do so, some are looking at offering customers services that are similar to MSPs, whereby the ISP acts as middleman. Other ISPs have acquired MSPs because of their management value; for example, Exodus Communications acquired Service Metrics to provide response time management. In general, analysts anticipate MSP consolidation, with ISPs and ASPs acting as the primary consolidators.
Partnerships are becoming common, for example, those between Keynote and Digex, and between Keynote and UUNet. ASPs are also partnering with tool vendors and MSPs to provide management services similar to those of ISPs; for example, PeopleSoft with Qwest, and Corio with Marimba. From their side, organizations must gauge whether these management services are sufficient, or if they should be supplemented.
A NEW BUSINESS MODEL: SERVICE VERSUS PRODUCT
At present, software vendors still generate the majority of Web site management products, which have comprehensive capabilities that provide testing, internal performance benchmarking, and site monitoring management tools. However, those considering an investment in an enterprise management system should consider the new business model in town. While vendors have traditionally productized enterprise management, the market for network, systems, and Web site management can now be segmented into service and software.
Luminate, for example, initially sold enterprise management as a product, but is now trying to reposition it as a service. As it moves from a pure enterprise application software provider to a service provider, it is managing applications and the Internet infrastructure. The MSP offers a series of services that let IT managers monitor the health of their E-business infrastructures, using a small downloadable tool and a subscription to Luminate.net.
The MSP is giving away a sizable piece of its offering by letting customers download its Mamba performance monitoring tool for free. The MSP expects that buyers will then plug into more advanced tools online for a monthly fee.
Mamba’
s package of Web server software and Java servlets tests events, performance, and availability. It can automatically discover network assets and do real-time testing — without a major deployment and without installing agents.
Thousands of copies of Mamba for SAP R/3 have already been downloaded. Luminate also offers Mamba for Windows NT and Mamba for Oracle databases. Prices range from $50 per server per month for the Windows version, to $350 per server per month for R/3, to $500 per server per month for Oracle.
To motivate Mamba users to become paying customers, Luminate provides small software bundles called “energizers,” by which the software communicates with Luminate.net. When customers plug into the Luminate.net site, they obtain expanded views of the data that Mamba collects, including graphical reports of performance over weeks or months. They also receive daily e- mail hotlists, which indicate trouble spots in the enterprise.
Via Luminate.net, subscribers can drill down into specific reporting areas, and access a library of help and support files. The service allows customers to monitor effectively, and retain important data, which would otherwise be very time –
consuming and difficult to do.
For its part, major MSP Keynote has an approach that sells only services — not software. And NetSolve offers management services that focus specifically on network performance and availability, rather than application behavior. As for the main enterprise management vendors, they will either buy management service companies, or provide a management service with their own tools, as an offshoot of their services organization, thereby productizing it. However, this is not their strong suit.
MOVING TOWARD STANDARDS
There are already so many MSPs that they cannot all survive; so there will be consolidation. Companies have the need to manage all elements; monitoring their response time, and all protocols to and from them. Correlating all this presents a problem, and the solution is not available as a holistic tool. Therefore, organizations need an integration point, such as a performance repository or response time event console. While this is not holistic, the information is integratable, and Micromuse, for one, can serve as an integration point.
In addition, Extended Markup Language (XML) will enable data-sharing among multi-vendors. To this end, the Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) provides a Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM) roadmap to give customers the ability to manage all their systems, regardless of instrumentation type, through the use of a common standard.
On October 19, 1998, the DMTF announced the first version of its XML Encoding Specification, to encode the Common Information Model (CIM) schema in XML. The specification defines XML elements, which can be used to represent CIM classes and instances. It will enable companies to leverage Web technologies to manage enterprise systems. Thus, XML lets industry groups worldwide rapidly define and implement standards for interoperability across diverse computing enviro nments and technologies. WBEM was initiated by BMC, Cisco, Compaq, Intel, and Microsoft, but was later incorporated into the DMTF.
THE MSP FUTURE
Organizations have an increasingly complex, expanding infrastructure to manage.
Even if the corporate infrastructure is manageable, the E-business environment presents new management challenges. In the recent past, efficient management provided E-businesses with a competitive advantage. Today, however, availability is