IntellidenHigh Performance Networking - Delivered
RSS
April 25, 2005
Leading Analyst Firm: Put Intelliden on Short List for Network Automation
Intelliden's Associative Networking explained
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/nsm/2005/0425nsm1.html
By Dennis Drogseth, Network World, 04/25/05
Enterprise Management Associates has been tracking network change and configuration management, or NCCM, for several years now. The better products now do far more than just change and configuration, though - they directly support issues of policy and compliance, service provisioning, service assurance and in some cases operational automation.
The leading vendors in this market - such as AlterPoint, Intelliden, Opsware (with its acquisition of Rendition) and Voyence - have all withstood several years of tough competition and all provide good products with strong R&D and impressive return on investment.
Today I'd like to focus on Intelliden, which has evolved from the OSS environment to support government and enterprise customers with rich capabilities for operational automation and powerful, in-depth device modeling. Last year, Intelliden acquired Goldwire Technologies, which brings strengths in security and access control. Intelliden's R-Series can give IT buyers with complex networks a leg up well beyond automating change, to enhance processes for better operational efficiencies and enforce policies to support both security and business-alignment priorities. Because of the multi-dimensional nature of the offering, Intelliden uses the term "Associative Networking" to position R-Series.
Associative Networking is a statement about the interrelationships among the networked infrastructure, the services it supports, the customers of those services, and the various professionals and organizations that make up both IT or OSS and counterparts in business operations. Associative Networking is a software-centric approach to encapsulating these interdependencies with high levels of reliability and automation.
Intelliden does this primarily by combining three core technologies: object-based modeling, support for policies, and workflow capabilities. Of these, the object modeling reflects the most profound investment in the R-Series products. The goal of object modeling is to capture human expertise directly in software through "model-based automation." Intelliden develops its modeling by parsing the command syntax of a device, and then the device commands into XML.
In this way, Intelliden captures the command structure of the device, and through a mixture of class types and associations the R-Series can relate device commands with configuration options for vendor, type, model and operating system. Intelliden supports a variety of network- and security-related devices, including but not limited to those from 3Com, Alcatel, Avaya, CheckPoint, Cisco, Dell, Enterasys, Extreme, Foundry, F5, HP, Juniper, Lucent and Nortel.
Building from the core of its object modeling, Intelliden has a topological awareness of the environment and uses extensible APIs to link service definitions with specific network interfaces through the Intelliden Resource Manager. These topologies can be viewed from multiple perspectives, including:
* Service-level definitions and requirements.
* Logical device connectivity.
* Organizational owners..
* Device models, types and vendors
* Other process-specific organizational requirements that can be custom-defined.
For troubleshooting, the R-Series can document when and how changes occur, and forward alerts when policies are violated to third-party fault management products such as Tivoli, OpenView, Micromuse, EMC-SMARTS, and BMC/Remedy.
R-Series supports policies targeted at security/compliance, operational process management, and business alignment. In the operational arena, for instance, read/write details for a specific action can be assigned by role. Intelliden's R-Series also supports DEN-ng (Directory-Enabled Networks-new generation) as a standards base for unifying processes within IT/OSS and between IT/OSS and its customers.
Workflow completes this triad of automation, with support for such specific tasks as the submission of units of work, approvals, validation, and the actual implementation of changes, along with reporting and notification.
Intelliden's R-Series should be on a short list when an IT or OSS organization is prepared to invest in defining and automating processes in the context of network change and configuration management. The R-Series' capabilities for automating operations based on capturing domain expertise in software are industry-leading. However, the investment should not be viewed as trivial, with most sales in six figures and some in seven figures. The R-Series and Intelliden can nevertheless be powerful allies in not only helping to automate change and configuration management, but also in helping IT/OSS organizations to evolve processes and improve business alignment.
Press Release Archive: 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | View All