3Com, Bay Beef Up Mana gement Offerings

3Com to unveil services; Bay eases software woes

By Caryn Gillooly

ightening the links with its newly acquired US Robotics division, 3Com Corp. this week is expected to unveil plans to integrate the two companies' network-management products. The move will provide a simplified but more complete management environment. Separately, 3Com rival Bay Networks is also expected this week to release enhancements to its Optivity network-management line.

Through a three-phase strategy that has already begun, 3Com will merge its Transcend Enterprise Manager with US Robotics' Total Control Manager. The integrated product, called Transcend Network Control Services (NCS), will be available in the second ha lf of next year. "This will help simplify overall management of a 3Com environment, and provide end-to-end management," says Kathy Rocha, director of marketing at 3Com's enterprise systems division in Santa Clara, Calif.

That's good news to users with both 3Com and US Robotics management products. "This will let me manage everything through one interface," says Niraj Patel, CIO at GMAC Mortgage Corp. in Horsham, Pa.

Customers today can run both companies' management applications concurrently. In the next phase of 3Com's plan, expected in the first quarter of next year, the company will sell a single integrated package that includes a core set of management services-including installation, inventory, database and performance monitoring, and more-as well as a set of value-added services aimed at large businesses and Internet service providers.

By the middle of next year, 3Com will offer additional services and applications, including accounting, security, and service-level management, as well as expanded support for other management products. 3Com also plans to continue enhancing Transcend NCS through smart agents that will provide more advanced management capabilities. Pricing for Transcend NCS is expected to be $3,495 for Windows-based systems and $9,495 for Unix- or NT-based systems.

Management Module
Bay Networks is expected to release Optivity Network Management System 8.0 this week. The new release bundles the Optivity LAN and Optivity Internetwork modules of its Optivity Enterprise management application suite with a new application called NetArchitect.

NetArchitect is a configuration management utility that lets administrators automatically create, modify, and distribute software configuration information throughout the network.

"We've automated the most time-consuming and intensive step in making changes on the network," says Craig Easley, Optivity product line manager at Bay, in Santa Clara.

Optivity NMS 8.0 is available now as a standalone application for $ 11,990 or as part of the Optivity Enterprise 8.0 management suite for $17,995.

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