The Open Source For IT Management

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A new open source-led effort wants to bring open choice to the systems
management space.

The Open Management Consortium (OMC) claims that it isn’t
anti-proprietary software but is about providing a true open standards
approach to systems management.

The OMC effort is starting off with a who’s who of core open source systems
management projects, including Nagios, Webmin, Zenoss, Emu Software’s
NetDirector, Qlusters openQRM and Symbiot’s openSIMS.

Among the goals of the
OMC is to help establish and utilize standards that allow for
interoperability and integration of systems management solutions.

Promoting open source systems management solutions is another key goal and
challenge for the OMC.

William Hurley, CTO of Qlusters, explained that many large enterprise
accounts that he goes into today know about Linux and not about open source.

“Open Source is not necessarily seen as a system management option, it’s
more of a choice between CA, Tivoli, HP and BMC,” Hurley told
internetnews.com.

“So the No. 1 challenge for us is to promote
open source tools within this environment to show how these things already
work together and how we’re working to make them work together even better.

The proverbial pie for systems management according to Hurley is growing, and
there is a need and a place for open source solutions.

“Traditional system management vendors see one pie and they want as big a
piece of that pie as possible,” Hurley said. “We actually think that with
the advent of commodity x86 Linux servers in data centers, and with data
centers being redefined, that there is actually more opportunity for system
management overall. And more people need these tools.

“We see this as an opportunity to open source the process of open standards
for management, as well as to drive open source into large enterprise data
centers.”

Though the participants in the OMC are competitors, the idea is that they can
together help to grow the ecosystem as a whole.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com. To read the full article, click here.