More Insight Into HP's OpenView

Six acquisitions since July 2003 have provided the OpenView product family with identification management, software application management, information life-cycle management, business service modeling, task automation and user provisioning. Now, HP has incorporated homegrown technologies into OpenView. The technologiesdubbed HP OpenView Business Process Insight and HP OpenView Route Analytics Management Systemprovide business-level insight into IT functions and root-cause analysis of network behavior.

In sync with last week's HP Software Forum in Montreal, the company also relaunched its Enterprise Management Services partner program, which fortifies the relationship between HP and its ISV partners while offering a new classification, dubbed Elite, for ISVs willing to commit resources to joint HP go-to-market strategies.

"The Adaptive Enterprise, simply put, is business and IT synchronized to capitalize on change," said Bill Emmett, chief solutions manager for Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP's management software organization.

"What Business Process Insight helps do is dynamically link business and IT by being able to take a business process [such as] order entry to shipment, model it very quickly, and then associate what components of the IT environment need to work in order to support the business process. So that if IT fails to perform its function, you are able to see what step in the business process failed," Emmett said.

Rather than simply mapping the IT network from server to router to storage, Business Process Insight maps the realtime business workflow across these and other network components, correlating information directly from order-entry systems and ERP-type systems, and utilizing data ranging from JMX to XML to create an image of how business performance pinballs through a network.

The job of maintaining the most efficient network routing can be assisted by HP OpenView Route Analytics Management System (RAMS). "When RAMS sees changes in the way traffic is being routed, it can conclude if those are desirable changes, if they are undesirable changes that are minor irritants, or if they are major service disruptions," said Emmett.

Meanwhile, the Enterprise Management Services program looks to provide a means for HP to better facilitate integration of ISV products with its own. The Elite tier has been added to the program for ISVs "willing to put a little skin in the game" by way of a "modest marketing investment," said Emmett.

HP's Enterprise Management Services program interests Glenn Johnson, director of marketing at Magic Software, an ISV in Irvine, Calif. While Magic Software has enjoyed a good relationship with HP in the technical arena over the years, Johnson said his company is anxious to do more with HP in the customer space.