OpenView users lament HP's integration delays

BURLINGTON, MASS. - Although Hewlett-Packard moved quickly to rename software it acquired from network performance management vendor Trinagy last year, users say the company needs to work just as fast to integrate the technology with other OpenView management software or they may not bring it into their networks.

At the inaugural meeting last week of the New England Chapter of OpenView Forum International last week, more than 60 users saw a demonstration of HP OpenView Performance Insight for Networks, the first performance management software resulting from the August 2001 acquisition of Trinagy. Users initially seemed interested in the demo but balked when they learned of the Sybase database on the back end.

"Frankly, I won't be touching this with Sybase attached," one user said during the demonstration.

HP OpenView Performance Insight for Networks is based on Trinagy's Trend software, which uses Sybase's database, while HP has built its OpenView line to work with Oracle databases. The databases store and manage all data collected by the software from network servers, devices and applications. Because nearly all management software needs extensive configuration when installed, introducing a new database or utilizing two different databases for similar software would consume many staff hours in configuration time and create performance problems if data is shared between databases.

The company announced the performance products and road map last November with a slew of other OpenView products (www.nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 8461). HP says it plans to move the former Trinagy software from the Adaptive Server Enterprise (formerly called Sybase SQL Server) by year-end. The availability of the repackaged Trinagy product into the OpenView portfolio might have come too soon for some users.

Jim Maas, senior monitoring engineer at NaviSite in Andover, Mass., says he'll wait until the performance products work with Oracle. A three-year user of HP's core network management software, Network Node Manager, Maas says his company is still deciding whether HP has the performance reporting it wants. But he adds that until the product runs on Oracle, it will not run in his network. Aside from the cost and time it would take to purchase, set up and maintain an additional database, Maas says he'd rather work with Oracle.

"[Sybase] SQL is not the greatest to work with. I've come into a lot of problems using it," Maas says. He says that setting up reports on Unix and getting them to work with the Oracle database is "a lot easier" than it is with a Sybase database.

Paul Bugala, senior analyst with IDC, says HP will have to make a substantial investment to move the performance management product from Sybase to Oracle, but the company would be wise to make that investment rather than think its customers will. And waiting close to 18 months after an acquisition to move the product from one database to another could disappoint users, he says.

HP and Trinagy users overlap to some degree, Bugala says, with about 65% of the more than 500 Trinagy customers also using OpenView. "It's one thing if they don't integrate it for new customers, but if they have existing customers waiting for their two software products now offered by one vendor to integrate, they should get to work," he says.

Purchasing performance management software from HP becomes an integration and price issue, says OpenView user David Szacik, senior network manager at the Northfield, N.H. offices of Freudenberg-NOK, an automotive parts maker.

He says the Sybase database and the cost of the performance software - which can range from $68,500 as stand-alone software, to $82,200 with service and support bundled in - have prompted him to evaluate performance products from other vendors along with HP.

"Even if it is a canned, self-contained database for the performance product, the product would be polling and working with other products on the network," he says. "Integration is very important, but the dollar signs are also an issue."