SAN FRANCISCO—Showing how much the two companies now appear to be working together on issues from Web services to security standards, IBM shared the floor with Microsoft Corp. at the IBM SHARE conference here this week.
At SHARE, IBMs annual software user conference, Microsoft executives talked up the forthcoming hardware/software/services bundle for systems management that the company is readying.
Israel Gat, general manager of management solutions at Microsoft, introduced the Microsoft Solution for Management (MSM). Gat said MSM, like the companys Microsoft Solution Offerings (MSOs), will feature hardware, Microsoft-supplied systems and application software, related “prescriptive” implementation blueprints and other documentation, and services provided by Microsoft and third parties.
MSM has been under development for the past year, Gat said. Microsoft first talked up MSM at the Microsoft Management Summit in May, and delivered to testers the first beta a couple of months later. Microsoft is slated to deliver the final MSM package within two months.
Gat said Microsoft is looking to the indirect channel to help sell this solution.
MSM will include operational assessment tools and documentation and other tools that will build on top of whats included in Microsofts current Systems Management Server and Microsoft Operations Manager products. This is designed to help users manage their corporate-wide distributions of patches and fixes, Gat said. MSM also will feature additional server-monitoring assistance, he said.