OpenVision Sets New Standard for Asset Management of Distributed Information Systems

First Comprehensive Asset Management Tool to Track PCs and Unix Systems

PLEASANTON, Calif., November XX, 1993 - OpenVision today set a new standard for heterogeneous distributed system asset management, introducing the first comprehensive solution that automates the discovery of asset data on PCs and Unix systems. OpenV*Assets helps organizations control hardware and software costs and plan for the future by quickly, easily and cost-effectively providing complete, up-to-date details on all their current information system assets.

With distributed information system purchases already exceeding mainframe capital outlays in many corporations, system managers are looking for ways to apply the principles of mainframe asset management to their distributed resources. OpenV*Assets collects the hardware, software, vendor, configuration, financial and purchasing information these managers need, logically groups it in modules and presents the data in configurable views for secure but easy access. Equipped with this knowledge, managers can negotiate better purchase, service and support agreements, ensure compliance with software licenses, plan major software upgrades and deploy new applications more quickly, avoid unnecessary or duplicate equipment purchases and deter equipment losses.

"OpenV*Assets goes well beyond the standard 'single-platform tool' functionality of tracking how many of what kinds of hardware components and software are on your network and merely storing it in a database," said Darrell Trimble, director of OpenVision's Performance Business Unit. "We've combined core technologies from our development partners to create the industry's only comprehensive asset management solution, one that facilitates capacity planning, budgeting and financial analyses across heterogeneous platforms."

According to Trimble, OpenV*Assets will eventually be integrated with OpenVision's chargeback, accounting, capacity management and other performance management applications.

OpenV*Assets is part of OpenVision's Performance Products family, a collection of integrated applications addressing the four essential areas of performance management: performance monitoring and analysis, capacity planning, usage accounting and asset and inventory management. The Performance Products family augments OpenVision's OpenV*OPSS, an integrated suite of best-of-breed systems management applications in the areas of operations, performance, storage and security.

Comprehensive Distributed Asset Management

OpenV*Assets demonstrates OpenVision's successful application integration capabilities, taking key technologies and combining them in new ways to create unique products. Under a joint technology agreement with Applied Innovation Management, Inc., and using core technology from its open event manager, OpenVision developed the Unix-based asset management application, incorporating automatic discovery of Unix system hardware and software.

Under a software licensing agreement with Tally Systems Corp., OpenVision then integrated the pioneering Census Recognition Technology-TM of Net Census-TM to provide the most complete and up-to-date automatic PC hardware and software inventory available.

The result is OpenV*Assets, the industry's only comprehensive asset management solution for heterogeneous distributed environments, combining automatic discovery of PC and Unix system resource configuration and inventory with a powerful asset management application.

"Knowing what hardware and software you have on your systems is a critical component of asset management," said Ted Jastrzembski, president of Tally systems. "The combination of Census Recognition Technology and OpenV*Assets is a significant step towards true open systems asset management."

OpenV*Assets enables a manager to view information on all the assets in a distributed system of mixed platforms on a single Unix-based management workstation, and can provide detailed audits and configuration reports on demand. Accurate tracking of all assets allows managers to secure every workstation, operating system, database and application as needed, providing a way to account for changes or additions and protecting against software piracy and data corruption.

"Using OpenV*Assets, a company can manage all the assets in a 100-node network for the price of a typical workstation," said Trimble. "With the savings made possible using OpenV*Assets, we estimate a company can get a complete return on its investment in one to two months."

Service Offerings

OpenVision is unique among systems management software companies in recognizing the central role of service, and in providing a comprehensive portfolio of service offerings to help its customers manage large-scale implementations of heterogeneous distributed systems. OpenVision offers a complete asset management implementation service as well as an asset assessment service, both designed to ensure complete success in using OpenV*Assets.

The asset management implementation package includes OpenV*Assets product implementation, training in its use, a customized asset base population and complete screen customization for each site for maximum useability.

The asset assessment service introduces a comprehensive asset tracking and assessment methodology, and identifies sources of immediate cost savings and asset issues. It aids customers in identifying volume purchase opportunities, discusses licensing issues, and helps implement resource budget and configuration planning.

Pricing and Availability

OpenV*Assets is available now from OpenVision. OpenV*Assets discovery agents (one required for each network node) are available for Sun platforms with Sun/OS or Solaris, HP 9000 model 700 or 800 systems running HP/UX, IBM RS/6000 workstations with AIX and IBM PC-compatibles, as well as PC servers running Novell NetWare, Banyan VINES, Microsoft LAN Manager or other PC-based network operating systems. The OpenV*Assets discovery agent's list price is $49 per node.

The OpenV*Assets manager application is available to run on Sun/OS, Sun Solaris, HP/UX and IBM/AIX workstations with either Motif or Open Look user interfaces, and costs $10,000.

Tally Systems Corp. is the world's leading supplier of full-featured inventory products for both stand-alone and networked PCs, providing packaged software solutions to improve management of end-user computing resources in organizations around the world. Founded in 1990 by experts in the field of hardware and software inventory, Tally Systems Census Recognition Technology software is currently licensed to inventory more than a million PCs at over 4000 client sites worldwide.

Founded in 1992, Applied Innovation Management, Inc. is one of the world's leading developers of object-oriented software (OOS) for the large client/server network environment. By means of AIM's virtual GUI technology, AIM provides the industry with heterogeneous software offering various GUI options: Open Look, Motif and Curses for Unix platforms (Sun, HP, DEC, IBM and SGI). In addition, with AIM's state-of-the-art virtual database technology, AIM's network management system software can be integrated with various database management systems: Sybase, Oracle and Informix.

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