If IT executives were to pick a theme song about network and systems management, Neil Young's "Like A Hurricane" would be perfect.

Network and systems management has never been easy. In the 1970s, security, provisioning, monitoring, and fixes were manual and time-consuming. In the '80s, single-function products automated processes, but nothing tied those products together. Then the big management vendors developed frameworks, but those frameworks could cost millions and take years to implement, leaving many customers with only partial installations.

Now, the wind is shifting and the big vendors, including Computer Associates, Compuware, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM, are breaking down their frameworks so customers can choose less-expensive and more-focused products that retain the same base code to keep them integrated. But the storm has yet to settle. Customers continue to complain about high costs and complex installations.

Some IT managers are finding success with a mix of midsize veterans and startups, including Concord Communications, FalconStor Software, Identify Software, Macro 4, and Marimba Software. The annual revenue for any of these companies is hundreds of millions of dollars less than the big guys, but many customers say size doesn't matter. These vendors assess customers' needs and strive to meet them, charge a reasonable price for their products, and follow industry standards for maintenance -- and they get the products running quickly.

KB Holdings Inc., a toy retailer in Pittsfield, Mass., replaced Compuware's application-management products after a 15-year partnership when it got a jolt of sticker shock. Compuware wanted more money because KB's mainframe had grown from 219 millions of instructions per second to 450 Mips. Guy Trag, KB's director of technical services, didn't need to check with top management. He didn't like the idea of paying Compuware another $1 million over three years, with no software upgrade.

Trag started talking to Macro 4. When Compuware found out, a district manager called to offer a better price. But even that price was about 85% higher than what Macro 4 now costs KB. Most of all, the new vendor is treating KB right. "Macro 4 is our buddy, and I absolutely didn't get that feeling from Compuware," Trag says.

VF Services, the IT unit of Vanity Fair apparel manufacturer VF Corp. in Greensboro, N.C., has opted to go with Identify, even though it still maintains a multimillion-dollar deal with Tivoli. VF Services, which manages 480 servers worldwide and plans to add another 100 by next year, tried Tivoli's management framework to avoid endless hours of manual operations on its own. But it ended up requiring much outside consulting work to debug the system and get it up and running. "The consulting was only after Tivoli failed us time and time again," says Eric Jones, VF Services' senior network engineer. Tivoli's Web-server support was poor, its products required too much scripting, and end points were losing connections.

Jones decided to try Identify's real-time debugging tools. "Root-cause analysis is a huge part of systems management," he says, "and solving the problem when something goes out is the hardest part." Identify tracks and logs problems to give network engineers valuable information.

Identify's software requires a deep understanding of Windows, making it a bit difficult to use. "The average Joe won't be able to use Identify without a lot of training," Jones says. But because Jones is Windows-literate, VF Services comes out well. He wrote the necessary scripts to get the troubleshooting information he needed.

Scott West-Roberts didn't require such customization when he decided to use a software-distribution and change-management product from Marimba. The decision has helped the director of technical services at $1 billion sporting-goods retailer Gart Sports Co. in Englewood, Colo., install new software and upgrades and manage employee-access rights throughout the network. "The infrastructure was becoming more complicated," West-Roberts says. "We had to touch everything."

Gart had been using Norton Ghost from Symantec Corp., but the software required an IT administrator to make any changes at each computer, rather than centrally. With Marimba's Desktop/Mobile Management and Change Management products, West-Roberts and his team enter parameters, and the software approves all installations at designated times. It also manages access rights. "Marimba handles complexity for us," West-Roberts says.

That, in a nutshell, is what businesses want management vendors to do.

Illustration by Tadeusz Majewski