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Managed Objects on Tuesday will weigh in on the configuration-management database issue when it launches its first Business Service Configuration Management offering.
In the debate over whether a centralized database or federation of multiple data sources is more effective, the Tysons Corner, Va. company is opting for the federated approach.
Its offering, which relies on nLayers Inc. IT-topology discovery appliance, maps the relationships of discovered components to each other and correlates that with additional data in other existing management tools for a single, consolidated view of the IT environment.
The nLayers appliance, dubbed the Business Technology Insight device, is a passive appliance that watches packets traversing the enterprise network to discover IT elements and their configurations.
Managed Object Solutions Inc.s solution then correlates heterogeneous network and systems management data to provide a federated view of configurations.
“We use adapters to pull in information thats relevant to the piece of the CMDB view the user wants to see. A virtual CMDB is a window into the distributed CMDB data that exists in companies today,” said Dustin McNabb, vice president of marketing in Tysons Corner.
Managed Objects has created about 50 different adapters to gather data from enterprise management tools such as BMC Software Inc.s Patrol, Hewlett Packard Co.s OpenView and IBMs Tivoli Enterprise Console.
In addition to the individualized views, Managed Objects Business Service Configuration Management offering sends out alerts in real time when changes happen anywhere in the IT service configuration.
McNabb asserted that, compared to other CMDB approaches, Managed Objects offering is less time consuming to set up. He said Managed Objects BSCM takes days or weeks, rather than months, to implement.
BSCM, which runs on a variety of operating systems including Linux, Microsoft Windows and Sun Microsystems Inc.s Solaris, costs $220,000, and the BTI appliance is $150,000.