Open Source Vendors and Projects Unite to Form Open Management Consortium

  http://www.emusoftware.com/content/view/177/99/
   
   
          Open Source Vendors and Projects Unite to Form Open Management
Consortium           Qlusters and Emu Software Lead Industry’s First Open
Source Management Consortium 
   
  CARY, North Carolina, USA May 9, 2006— Leading open source systems and
network management vendors Qlusters and Emu Software today announced the
industry’s first Open Management Consortium (OMC).  The Consortium will
promote the benefits offered by open source and open standard technologies
and will provide a forum for product development collaboration among open
source IT management projects. The founding members of the OMC include Nagios
(sponsored by Ayamon), NetDirector (sponsored by Emu Software), openQRM
(sponsored by Qlusters), openSIMS (sponsored by Symbiot), the Webmin project
and the Zenoss project (sponsored by Zenoss, Inc.).
  “The Consortium is an innovative approach that will allow multiple open
source providers to collaborate on systems management initiatives for servers
running open source software stacks,” said Jean Bozman, an IDC analyst based
in San Mateo, CA. “Small companies do not have the reach or the resources to
provide a broad-based systems management solution, or framework, without
collaboration. This Consortium provides a mechanism to aggregate open source
systems management solutions--and to fit these management solutions together
to address customers' operational costs.”
  The Consortium is comprised of leading open source projects that are
developing and shaping the technologies used to manage IT infrastructure,
particularly open source infrastructure such as that hosted on Linux.  The
initial committee members represent community leaders and firms that are
central to open management technologies.   Specific objectives of the Open
Management Consortium include:
    
   Create awareness of open source management tools in the market   
   Provide education and resources to help end users make informed decisions
regarding open source   
   Establish conventions and standards that enable integration and
interoperability   
   Enable collaboration and coordination on common development projects   
   Promote collaborative open source systems management solutions
  The Consortium will work to drive open standards for systems management
within the industry, assisting IT managers and system administrators to
custom-create solutions to best serve their business needs. One of the first
projects will involve developing protocols for managing common IT
infrastructure components, including information about servers, storage
devices, configurations, networks models, middleware, applications and other
relevant data, to create a unified approach to systems management for open
source vendors and projects. The Consortium’s agenda also includes designing
several integration paths for exchanging data with proprietary systems.
  “By uniting these projects, we are providing IT managers with an
alternative choice to the monolithic approach traditionally found in systems
management,” said William Hurley, chief technology officer at Qlusters. “The
Open Management Consortium will spearhead the movement to open source open
standards, leveling the playing field in systems management and providing
equal opportunity for all to participate.”
  Mark Hinkle, LinuxWorld editor in chief, vice president of strategy at Emu
Software and co-founder of the Open Management Consortium, said, “Having the
freedom to manage and monitor systems using the technologies you want and to
have those systems interact is our long-term goal. The Open Management
Consortium will start by providing a forum for collaboration among these
vendors and projects.”
  “Collaboration between different projects that occupy the same space is the
next natural step in the evolution of open source and has the potential to
radically alter the way we use open source tools,” added Ethan Galstad,
founder of Nagios.  “The commercial systems management space appears to be
headed for a shakeup, with the open source projects participating in the Open
Management Consortium leading the charge.  I'm definitely excited that the
Nagios project is part of this effort.”
  Mike Erwin, founder and chief executive officer of Symbiot said, “I'm
excited to see an organization like the Open Management Consortium through
which security tools can be integrated with other systems monitoring,
administrative and management systems to provide a cohesive vantage of an
organization's technology landscape.”
  “The Open Management Consortium will provide a valuable service in bringing
together the various open source systems management tools and ensuring
compatibility among them,” commented Jamie Cameron, leader of the popular
open source management project, Webmin. 
  Bill Karpovich, co-founder and chief executive officer of Zenoss, added,
“There is growing movement towards open source management solutions because
of the dramatic cost advantages and the flexibility that we offer. By working
together, we'll be able to bring these benefits to a larger audience much
more quickly.”
  Membership in the Open Management Consortium will be open to like-minded
open source projects and companies looking to collaborate on complimentary
open source and open standards-based solutions. Additional participants will
be announced shortly.
  About the Open Management Consortium
The Open Management Consortium was announced to help advance the promotion,
adoption, development and integration of open source systems/network
management software. The founding members of the Consortium are Ayamon, Emu
Software, Qlusters, Symbiot, Webmin and Zenoss. For more information, please
visit http://www.openmanagement.org.
  About Qlusters, Inc.
Founded in 2001, Qlusters provides open source systems management software to
automate the data center. openQRM significantly reduces annual management
costs for the data center while helping increase server utilization and
minimizing downtime for Fortune 1000 companies. Qlusters is partners with
leading vendors including HP, IBM, Intel, and Red Hat. The company is
headquartered in Palo Alto, California with offices in Israel and New York.
For more information, please visit http://www.qlusters.com.
  About Emu Software
Emu Software, Inc. is the maker of NetDirector, an extensible management
framework that brings features such as rollback, policy-based administration,
multi-server changes, and an ergonomic interface to open source systems. Emu
Software is the corporate sponsor of the open source NetDirector project and
offers support and service offerings around the open source tools. Emu
Software strives to deliver the leading cross-platform, cross-distribution
configuration management solution for open source services such as Apache,
Bind, Sendmail, and many others. Emu Software is headquartered in Cary, N.C.
For more information, please visit http://www.emusoftware.com.
  Ayamon, LLC 
Ayamon, LLC was founded in 2003 with the purpose of helping to expand
awareness and adoption of Open Source software in businesses and
organizations worldwide. We believe strongly in the power, flexibility,
outstanding value, and societal benefits that Open Source software has to
offer. For more information, please visit http://www.ayamon.com.
  Symbiot, Inc. 
Symbiot is a leading provider of intelligent security infrastructure
management systems (iSIMS). As the pioneer in applying risk metrics to
adaptive network security, Symbiot utilizes proprietary genetic algorithms to
measure, manage and mitigate risk to your networked assets. Through
Symbiot.NET, Symbiot's customers benefit from adaptive profiles defined from
industry groups, and other Symbiot customers for community centric security;
a new approach to mitigating risk. For more information, please visit
http://www.symbiot.com.
  About Webmin 
Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any
browser that supports tables and forms (and Java for the File Manager
module), you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and so on.
Webmin consists of a simple web server, and a number of CGI programs which
directly update system files like /etc/inetd.conf and /etc/passwd. The web
server and all CGI programs are written in Perl version 5, and use no
non-standard Perl modules. http://webmin.com.
  About Zenoss, Inc. 
Based in Annapolis, Maryland, Zenoss, Inc. is a systems management software
company that is lowering the cost and complexity of enterprise systems
monitoring and management through the power of its innovative software and
open source development. The Zenoss software product provides an integrated,
highly automated enterprise monitoring solution and is available for download
at http://www.zenoss.org. 
  Contact
  Mark R. Hinkle
Vice President
Emu Software
pr@emusoftware.com
Phone: 877.848.6100 x7006
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