Microsoft, EMC unveil systems and network management technology licensing, collaboration agreement

EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC), the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ "MSFT") recently announced a network management technology licensing agreement and a broader technology collaboration - combining the market's leading solutions for network and systems management for delivery of network-aware, end-to-end service management.

The two companies unveiled the alliance at the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2007 in San Diego, California.

Key to the announcement, Microsoft is licensing EMCR Smarts network discovery and health monitoring technology to be included in a future version of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, the company's award-winning solution for end-to-end service monitoring in the enterprise IT environment.

Additionally, EMC is developing value-added network management and root-cause analysis management packs to be used in conjunction with both current and future versions of System Center Operations Manager.

Delivering against the initial phase of this agreement, EMC today is announcing the EMC Smarts Connector for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007.

This two-way connector enables Smarts to share network discovery, topology and root-cause events with Operations Manager and for Operations Manager to synchronise alert status and resolution back to EMC Smarts technology - thus allowing customers to leverage the benefits of a closely integrated network and systems management suite for service availability today. The connector will be generally available in May 2007.

"System Center Operations Manager gives customers an integrated, end-to-end service management solution that helps increase efficiency and allows for greater control of the IT environment," said Bob Muglia, Senior Vice-President of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. "By integrating EMC's market-leading network management technology into Operations Manager and collaborating with EMC to develop a new cross-domain behavioural model that will enhance our management pack schema, we are able to give customers a true network-aware service management solution and improve operations management across disparate devices and systems to help pinpoint the root cause of service-affecting problems."

Taking the agreement one step further, EMC and Microsoft are collaborating on the co-development of a cross-domain behavioural model in the context of Operations Manager to improve IT operations management across disparate devices and systems. The companies are committed to driving industry standards which enhance interoperability and simplify management in today's complex information infrastructures. Leveraging these co-developed models, Operations Manager customers will be able to determine the root cause of service issues across the modelled infrastructure. Additionally, the large ecosystem of Operations Manager partners can add to these models to broaden visibility and control to new devices, services and applications resulting in lower management costs and reduced complexity.

"The only way to achieve end-to-end service visibility and control across today's complex information infrastructure is to model and manage the behaviours among components, with a cross-domain model that focuses on elements and how they interact with one another," said Alex Robertson, Technology Solutions Manager EMC South Africa. "EMC's rich history in model-based management and root-cause analysis make it the perfect complement to Microsoft System Center - bringing behaviour-aware service integrity to Operations Manager 2007. Together, EMC and Microsoft represent the next wave in model-based management, focused on returning behavioural line of sight to IT operations."

The EMC and Microsoft collaboration consists of the leading solutions for network and systems management, and combines the advanced correlation and root cause capabilities of EMC with the ease-of-use, partner ecosystem and market reach of Microsoft.

"Today's enterprises are in need of solutions that offer modular capabilities that combine effective discovery and analytics with domain depth in support of service management across servers, applications, Web services and the network. The problem is, for the most part, that modular, flexible and deployable solutions that answer critical service management needs are rare in contrast with more rigid platform architectures that require lengthy and painful deployments," said Dennis Drogseth, Vice-President, Enterprise Management Associates.

"By committing to broad-based technology collaboration, EMC and Microsoft are paving the way for customers to optimise real bench depth in systems, network, and storage and application management capabilities in support of strategic service management."