SAS Claims Second Datamation Award

It was a tight race to the finish, but SAS Institute’s IT Service Level

Management product squeaked ahead of its closest competitor to capture

the first place finish in Datamation’s 2005 Product of the Year category

for Network and Systems Management Software.

Giving the winner a run for its money was SystemAnalyzer from eIQnetworks

Inc., with a close second-place finish. Coradiant, Inc. claimed the

third-place slot with its TrueSight Real Transaction Monitor.

Other finalists were AutoProf’s Policy Maker; Network Instruments, LLC’s

Observer, and Ecora Software Corp. with its Ecora Patch Manager 3.2.

The most recent component of the company’s SAS IT Management Solutions,

SAS IT Service Level Management, provides users with a hierarchical

framework for measuring and monitoring the performance of IT services.

According to SAS, the product helps companies differentiate in-house

services from those of commercial vendors. It also provides a yardstick

to measure and improve the quality of IT service delivery.

Stephen Elliot, a research director at IDC, an industry analyst firm

based in Framingham, Mass., says interest in service level management is

increasing as IT operations become more business-centric and operate as a

service provider rather than a cost center. ”Most companies are striving

towards this concept,” he says.

”There also is a big push within IT operations groups to drive the

integration between infrastructure management tools to improve cost

efficiency and enable more automation,” he adds.

Recognition of SAS IT Service Level Management by Datamation readers may

go hand-in-hand with what some industry watchers see as a growing

interest in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), used worldwide as a

blueprint for best practices for IT service level management.

According to SAS, IT Service Level Management is designed to help

businesses ensure alignment of the IT organization with overall business

objectives. The product integrates with ITIL best practices and allows

implementation of methodologies for: creating service level catalogs;

documenting line-of-business and corporate IT service contracts and

agreements; delivering statistically rich service level objective

measurement and reporting; developing a standardized auditable,

service-level management data warehouse; and performing advanced fault

management.

Network security issues are always on the forefront when it comes to

network and management systems. It’s no surprise then that SystemAnalyzer

from eIQnetworks received great support from Datamation readers.

According to the company, SystemAnalyzer is a browser-based, centralized

event management solution designed to improve security, performance and

reduce the downtime of distributed servers and workstations. The product

collects, normalizes, aggregates and correlates security, systems, and

application log data from enterprise-wide, distributed Windows, Unix and

Linux hosts.

”A lot of network managers are looking for early warning systems for

security threats,” says IDC’s Elliot.

With an increase in regulatory compliance requirements, such as the

Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

(HIPAA) and Gramm-Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), to name several, there’s more

pressure to manage network security. Many recent regulatory requirements

are forcing businesses to look beyond protecting the perimeter of the

network to, instead, monitor data that originates within the company.

”Historically, monitoring tools did a poor job, but there’s a growing

expectation among businesses that they get more visibility of network

threats,” says Elliot.

According to eIQnetworks, SystemAnalyzer can help companies meet

regulatory requirements by delivering required reports. Other product

benefits include: cross-platform system event management; centralized

performance monitoring; management for mission critical applications;

risk management; and advanced security violation and warning.

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