SMB Channel Optimistic About Microsoft MOM 2005 Express

The new offering, dubbed Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Express, was unveiled at the company's annual management software summit in Las Vegas on Tuesday. The product moved into beta testing this week.

Microsoft executives said they aim to ship MOM 2005 and MOM 2005 Express by the end of the year. The core product was known as MOM 2004 until its renaming at the show on Tuesday.

The Redmond, Wash., software giant said the Express version of MOM 2005 will offer most of the same enterprise-level operational management capabilities of MOM 2005 but for small, targeted environments.

MOM 2005 Express will provide performance monitoring, built-in application intelligence for identifying IT issues and tools for ensuring high service availability for Windows Server System components--but for a restricted number of servers. MOM 2005, in contrast, provides support for thousands of servers.

Though Microsoft declined to specify pricing or the limit on the number of servers that can be managed by MOM 2005 Express, channel partners applauded the debut of a lower-cost management solution that could alleviate migration and system management issues for many of their small-business customers.

"One of the frustrations felt by an organization outgrowing and leaving the Small Business Server cocoon is a loss of many of the great management and monitoring tools that SBS includes," said Marc Harrison, president of Silicon East, a solution provider based in Manalapan, N.J. "An SMB version of MOM would not only ease the transition to the full Windows Server environment, but also in many cases it might encourage otherwise-hesitant SMB customers to take the plunge. 'MOM-lite' would alleviate that pain point."

Like MOM 2005, MOM 2005 Express will also include a new Operations Console that gives a topological view of systems running and highlights system state awareness, enabling customers and their partners to monitor the Windows environment.

Jason Harrison, owner of Harrison Technology Consulting, a Nashville, N.C.-based solution provider, said the IT management needs of SMBs are real but largely go unfulfilled because existing systems-management products are too costly, ranging from $800 to several thousand dollars. A more affordable management product will solve those problems for customers and their partners, he said.

"I can see the need, especially if the price is right. We have a number of clients in the 10- to 50-workstation range that do not have dedicated IT staff on board, and we end up covering the management side," Harrison said. "We have to do a lot of work the old-fashioned way, without slick tools like MOM, since smaller companies don't have a large enough need to invest in today's tools for system management."

Harrison noted that he has approached third-party systems-management software vendors about providing lower-cost offerings for SMBs, but so far he hasn't seen any yet. "Smaller companies need good systems-management tools to track software usage and manage and report on basic e-mail traffic flow and Web usage," he said. "If Microsoft delivers at a good price point with decent features, a tool like MOM Express will likely be a hit."

MOM 2005 Express won't include the MOM 2005 Connector Framework for third-party plug-ins or the MOM 2005 Reporting component, Microsoft said. The MOM 2005 software moved into beta testing last year and this week entered final beta testing, company executives said.

Systems management will be adopted by partners in the SMB space as long as the pricing remains low, said Michael Cocanower, president of ITSynergy, a Microsoft Certified Partner based in Phoenix.

"Assuming that the SMB MOM doesn't require dedicated hardware, it might be a good solution," Cocanower said. "I can see how that would help a VAR in supporting small-business customers more effectively."