Network management company RiverSoft has partnered with local infrastructure services management company Network Support Services (NSS) to bring RiverSoft`s products to the South African market. The non-exclusive deal gives NSS what it refers to as a "complete infrastructure service management solution".
NSS also partners with Visionael, one of RiverSoft`s global partners, which gives the company access to Visionael`s database repository technology. The combined products will give customers a universal view of their physical and logical network maps, allowing faults to be isolated on both levels.
RiverSoft keeps Visionael up to date with the latest network maps, using RiverSoft`s Network Management Operating System to trace the network as it changes, while Visionael helps RiverSoft pass more information about faulty devices on the network to the administrators.
"The repository information cuts down on downtime as the network administrator immediately knows a lot more about the device that is down - what it is and where it lives," comments Andre Odendaal, MD of NSS.
The two major factors driving the market, according to Odendaal, are lack of skills and the need to measure service level agreements (SLAs). With high turnover in IT departments and lack of skills in the current market, the combined products act as a type of knowledge management for networks. Inexperienced techies will be able to locate the problem even though they do not have a good understanding of the network map.
"The thing with SLAs is to write them in such a way that you can measure it," comments Odendaal. NSS uses the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) methodology to help its customers develop SLAs, and uses its infrastructure solutions to monitor the SLAs once they have been developed.
RiverSoft is known for its partnership with Hewlett-Packard, announced last year, which gave HP`s OpenView product management capabilities through to layer 2 devices on the network. "HP were and still are our biggest competitor," admits Mark Rivington, EMEA marketing director, RiverSoft, referring to the relationship as "co-opetition".
Other products in the NSS camp include NetIQ`s Chariot and Pegasus performance management solutions and Trinagy`s TREND performance reporting solution.
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