Cooperative development efforts help deliver industry standards
Enterprise Information Management (EIM) pioneer, Seagate Software, has confirmed its commitment to support Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and to demonstrate contributions to WBEM`s Common Information Model (CIM) developments.
Seagate Software extends CIM (an information model that supports a consistent and unified view of systems, networks, applications and other logical and physical objects in a managed environment) to encompass requirements for network storage management.
Seagate Software`s EIM strategy, designed to address the growing need of corporations for information delivery, analysis and availability, supports and complements WBEM, which offers APIs and a standard data model unifying management of network, system and application resources distributed across the enterprise.
Nick van Noordwyk, regional manager for MEA at Seagate Software, Network and Storage Management Group, says WBEM offers customers a common model to manage applications and resources. "EIM extends this model to industry standards such as SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), DMI (Desktop Management Interface) and now CIM," he says.
It provides the foundation for integrating and managing EIM solutions through a set of comprehensive WBEM providers and management applications that can correlate, filter, analyse, report and act on management information.
Seagate Software has been actively collaborating with the Microsoft Windows Management Infrastructure Group, a pivotal force behind the WBEM initiative. For example, Seagate Crystal Reports, currently a part of Seagate Manage Exec 5.5, allows the administrator to do sophisticated reporting on WBEM data.
Seagate Crystal Info is also scheduled to integrate with Seagate Manage Exec 5.5, enabling the latter to analyse and report on WBEM data. Components of these WBEM management agents and applications are scheduled to be available with the standard Microsoft Windows NT 5.0 distribution from Microsoft.
By mid-1999, all new Seagate Software network storage product releases for Windows NT are scheduled to include a WBEM provider. This will enable any WBEM management application to view and modify configuration parameters and monitor status variables published by Seagate Software products. These management solutions equip the IT administrator with a flexible means to access and manage distributed data from a central location.
"Similar to our EIM strategy, the WBEM infrastructure is designed to unify data manageability," says van Noordwyk.
"By implementing the two together, our customers can anticipate a quicker response to business changes, improved strategic decision-making and distributed decision-making power throughout the enterprise."
In addition, Seagate Software has provided the backup applet in Microsoft Windows NT since its initial release in 1991, including Microsoft BackOffice Small Business Server and Microsoft Exchange, and continues to support the next generation of Windows NT 5.0 with the backup applet, System Disaster Recovery utility and Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) applet. Seagate Software also provides the backup utility for the Microsoft Windows 98 operating system.
For more information about Seagate Software, Network and Storage Management Group, contact the company`s regional office in Johannesburg on +27 (0)11 448-2080.
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