REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 13, 2003 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of enhancements to Microsoft® Operations Manager (MOM) 2000 that provide a cost-effective, improved toolset for customers and partners to manage their Windows®
environments and to extend and integrate MOM with third-party management solutions.
The enhancements include new and updated Management Packs containing application-specific knowledge for the most-common Microsoft server environments, Service Pack 1 (SP1) with customer-requested fixes, a new software development kit (SDK 2) and a new MOM Resource Kit. Microsoft Operations Manager delivers enterprise-class operations management by providing comprehensive event management, proactive monitoring and alerting, reporting, and trend analysis.
“The introduction of these enhancements is a significant step toward Microsoft’s continued commitment to making Windows the best-managed environment,”
said Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of the Management Business Group at Microsoft.
“Our customers expect a management solution that delivers a quick and continuous return on investment through ease of deployment and use. Microsoft Operations Manager can reduce day-to-day support costs of Windows-based environments through seamless maintenance of mission-critical applications and systems.”
“One large enterprise client has upgraded all its existing Windows 2000 domain controllers to Windows Server 2003 RC1 as part of the Windows Server 2003 early adopter program. We have been using MOM SP1 with the Active Directory® Management Pack to successfully monitor, test and manage the operational characteristics of its critical servers,”
said Stuart B. Renes, senior technical lead for EDS.
“The performance and scalability enhancements available with MOM SP1 provide tremendous value for managing large enterprise environments.”
Members of the Microsoft Management Alliance, including Avanade Inc., BMC Software Inc., Citrix Systems Inc., Computer Associates International Inc., FullArmor, HP, Micromuse Inc. and NetIQ Corp., are embracing MOM to easily manage Windows-based enterprise environments by investing in the integration. Through the Microsoft Management Alliance, Microsoft provides technical and marketing support to assist more than 920 software companies using its management solutions and services.
“Avanade has been using MOM to monitor mission-critical systems in projects with large enterprise customers, and Microsoft’s enhancements in SP1 and the SDK will increase our ability to deliver more robust and reliable monitoring,”
said Christopher Burry, technology infrastructure fellow for Avanade, a global technology integrator.
“In particular, our customers benefit from the increased reliability of the clustering support for MOM database and the additional scalability, which allows for monitoring of twice as many servers as with previous versions.”
Microsoft Operations Manager enhancements available today include the following:
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Management Pack updates. Approximately 30 Management Pack updates extend the ability of Microsoft Operations Manager to monitor Windows-based environments. For example, new Management Packs enable monitoring of applications created for the Microsoft .NET Framework, Network Load Balancing and Cluster Services. Updated Management Packs also extend the reach of previously monitored applications.
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Service Pack 1. The Service Pack extends the power and functionality of Microsoft Operations Manager in several ways. Globalization support enables the software to manage non-English-language servers and applications. Performance and scalability enhancements enable MOM installations to monitor twice as many servers as before, making it easier and more cost-effective to manage large environments. Also, new support for clustering the MOM database enables mission-critical availability of the MOM enterprise management solution.
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SDK 2. New tools and components in SDK 2 include sample two-way connectors, integration of user-interface views, custom reporting solutions and better support for managing non-Windows servers. Developers can use the additions for programmatic group management, to access all data collected by MOM through SQL views, for programmatic access to alerts, and to integrate MOM data with help desks and service desks to automate trouble-ticket generation.
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MOM Resource Kit. New tools increase the efficiency of running Microsoft Operations Manager in a variety of environments. A Server Status Monitor utility installs in minutes and boosts MOM efficiency in small environments. New testing and debugging tools enable testing of scripts prior to production use.
With these enhancements to Microsoft Operations Manager, Microsoft is delivering on its commitment to management for Windows customers. At the Microsoft Management Summit in March, details are scheduled to be announced about the next release of Microsoft Operations Manager and other Microsoft Management Solutions. This is the premier forum for learning about Windows-based environments and will include industry experts, product team experts and industry partners. More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/mms2003/ .
More information and a download of the enhancements to Microsoft Operations Manager can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/mom/ .
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Supporting Industry Quotes
“BMC Software has a strong and longstanding relationship with Microsoft, and we look forward to further strengthening that relationship by leveraging the new Microsoft Operations Manager Software Development Kit. The new SDK will provide a means to move event and monitoring data between Microsoft Operations Manager and BMC’s leading enterprise event management system, PATROL, providing our mutual customers with flexible management of their Windows environment.”
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Dave Anderson
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Director, Product Management and Development, PATROL
BMC Software
“The MOM SDK has given Citrix the ability to provide integration with MOM that simplifies and standardizes the management of our customers’ server farm resources. Being able to monitor both MetaFrame XP server farms, the hardware and the Microsoft server environment from a single console allows customers to centralize server farm management, quickly detect and troubleshoot problems, and keep training and TCO down. The new capabilities provided by Microsoft allow us to deliver a truly integrated management solution to our customers.”
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Brian Nason
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Business Line Director, Client/Server Products
Citrix
“As computing environments grow in scale and complexity, customers are driven to pursue new efficiencies in how they manage those environments. Microsoft’s MOM SDK 2 provides practical enhancements that will enable users of CA’s Unicenter solutions to leverage interactive communication with MOM objects to help achieve critical management efficiencies and ease implementation of highly automated systems management processes.”
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David Hochhauser
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Vice President, Unicenter Brand Management
Computer Associates
“We had considered a stand-alone version of our FAZAM Auditing product, but when we looked at MOM we concluded that integrating with the rich MOM infrastructure through the MOM SDK would help us get FAZAM Auditing to market more quickly. As a result, our customers are able to leverage MOM with FAZAM Auditing to audit and secure their group policies.”
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Danny Kim
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CTO
FullArmor
“In today’s dynamic world of Web services, management of heterogeneous IT environments from a service level and business perspective continues to be a key requirement for our customers. The integration of HP OpenView Service Desk with MOM 2000 provides customers with more options to afford increased levels of service for their enterprise environments. HP also provides a free management pack integration module for MOM, which integrates with HP Insight Manager and provides a superior management solution for ProLiant server customers. The MOM SP1 enhancements and the MOM SDK offer HP the ability to more easily integrate capabilities between MOM, HP OpenView Service Desk and HP Insight Manager, allowing customers to reap the benefits of a full system-level to service-level management solution.”
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Jim Grant
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Vice President and General Manager, HP OpenView
HP
“Micromuse is pleased to work with Microsoft to offer our customers a tightly integrated solution for assuring the ongoing health and availability of Windows-based environments. The latest version of Microsoft’s SDK will enable flexible integration between the Netcool suite and Microsoft Operations Manager, providing our mutual customers with a real-time monitoring and service visibility solution that encompasses application, system and network resources.”
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Darin Layman
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Vice President, Market Solutions
Micromuse
“NetIQ offers the broadest library of management packs for MOM 2000 with our Extended Management Pack (XMP) product line. Version 1.1, which will be released this month, includes more than 23 XMP solutions that extend MOM to over 35 applications, platforms and third-party system management products. The MOM SDK provides greater flexibility allowing NetIQ to develop additional XMP solutions. Together, MOM and NetIQ XMP modules deliver a robust and comprehensive systems management solution.”
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Rick Schell
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General Manager, Performance and Availability Management Business Unit, and Corporate CTO
NetIQ
