The Next Wave for Open Source: IT Management

The $7 billion worldwide market for IT management software is on the cusp
of a dramatic change, and once again open-source solutions are driving the
transformation. Much like Apache during its initial rise to prominence in
Web servers, open-source IT management products, such as Nagios, have matured
rapidly and now offer competitive functionality and greater
flexibility over proprietary platforms at a fraction of the cost.

It's no secret that proprietary IT management platforms are criticized for
being monolithic, inflexible, difficult to use and expensive to manage. But until recently,
CIOs looking for a simple yet robust IT management solution at a better
price had few alternatives. In 2005, however, the dynamics of this
market are shifting. With companies such as AOL, Cingular, Siemens,
TicketMaster and TimeWarner Cable already embracing and relying on open-source
IT management products, the category of open-source IT management
solutions is poised for mainstream adoption.
Proprietary Problem: Functionality Overkill
One of the core challenges and criticisms associated with proprietary
IT management platforms is functionality overkill. The four platforms
that now dominate the market--from BMC, Computer Associates, HP and
IBM--all were designed for the upper echelon of the Fortune 100. The
result is an overload of capabilities and features that the majority
of companies don't want or need. Many Global 2000 firms now pay license
costs for IT management software that reach seven figures. Deployment and
system administration of these proprietary systems are even more
expensive tasks, typically costing five to eight times the initial
software-licensing fee.

One of the central complaints of IT teams using commercial IT management
frameworks is the inherent difficulty in customizing and configuring these
proprietary systems. Getting a product such as HP OpenView or IBM Tivoli
configured and deployed often takes months, even years in many cases. Once
the system is installed, users face rigid vendor lock-in scenarios.

The issue, as every IT veteran knows, is configuring and deploying an
IT management system is never a one-time effort. Corporate networks are
changing constantly, which forces IT teams to reconfigure continually
proprietary frameworks that were not designed for easy customization
or rapid deployment.

In the open-source world, the network-upgrade scenario plays out
differently from what happens with proprietary products. Mainly, there's a
high probability that the add-on functionality you need is available for
free for download, thanks to the Open Source community.

Of course, there are no guarantees that the functionality you need is
written and available from the Open Source community. But even in
situations where you are the first company to develop open-source code
to address a specific need or problem, you still maintain the distinct
advantage of utilizing an open, standard protocol instead of a proprietary
API. For IT managers, this makes good business sense for two reasons.
First, it enables you to tap into the pool of talented open-source developers
rather than relying on specialists who work with a closed API. Second, it
ensures a solid return on investment from every dollar spent training
your IT team, because those skills will be valuable and applicable over
the long term.
Open Source, by Definition Flexible and Easy to Integrate
Open-source IT management solutions have three core characteristics that
make them well-suited to the task of monitoring
and managing heterogeneous IT environments: they provide
open interfaces; they are built on component architectures that
are highly configurable; and the open-source code is transparent
and designed to be modifiable.

This combination makes an open-source IT management solution an ideal "manager of
managers." The reality is that most companies have several different IT
management systems in place already, each monitoring different aspects
of the network at any given moment. One system monitors application
performance, for example, while another focuses on databases and still
another manages routers and other network devices. Numerous companies
have decided to deploy an open-source solution as their master IT management system,
capable of tying disparate monitoring and performance management systems into
a single, cohesive whole. By providing a consolidated view across the entire
IT infrastructure, this manager of managers approach enables better
IT performance and more timely IT decision-making.

At the same time, an open-source solution also can be integrated easily
into the network as a peer to an incumbent IT management system. Because
they are compatible with existing enterprise technologies, open-source
solutions mesh tightly with legacy solutions without requiring
major infrastructure modifications. That means companies are able
to embrace open source incrementally without making any significant
and costly changes to their environments. Once installed, open-source
IT management solutions prove to be stable and reliable, in large part
because they've been tested and peer-reviewed on a global scale.
Main Driver: Lower Cost
Although the abilities to integrate easily and play the manager of managers
role set open-source solutions apart from proprietary offerings, the
fact remains that lowering costs is the primary driver in the growth
of open-source IT management. Open-source solutions lower both the upfront cost
and the long-term TCO of IT monitoring and management in several ways:

• No licensing fees: With open source, software is essentially free.
  Customers pay only for enhancements, services and
  support.
• Lower deployment costs: Because
  open-source solutions don't install unnecessary features, deployments
  are completed quickly and easily. Companies save money by paying
  only for the features they need. Whereas a proprietary solution may run
  in the six figures and offer 100 different features, a company needing
  only 20% of that functionality can pay only for those requirements if it
  goes with an open-source product.
• Low system administration overhead, because you manage
  only what you've installed: Because they are efficient without offering gratuitous
  features, open-source IT management solutions don't require expensive
  vendor-specific consulting and training.
• Low hardware costs: Open-source products typically run on inexpensive,
  industry-standard boxes, further lowering overall
  costs.

A Growing Open Source Ecosystem
A number of open-source IT management products are gaining traction,
including Nagios--660,000 downloads since 2001--for availability
monitoring; MRTG (Multi-Router Traffic Grapher) for network device
statistics; Nmap for network scanning and discovery; Ntop for network
traffic analysis; SyslogNG for log file analysis; and Cacti for SNMP
analysis and performance graphing. These products provide strong core
functionality for an enterprise-class monitoring solution.

Equally important, a growing ecosystem of companies is now in place
with a track record of delivering professional-level consulting,
integration and support services that many CIOs require before making the move
to open-source IT management. Companies such as SourceFire, GlueCode and
GroundWork, for example, now offer a range of services from deployment
and configuration to ongoing support, along with extensive documentation
and knowledge bases that capture repeatable best practices. These kinds
of product enhancements and packaged services result in a more complete
enterprise-ready IT management solution.
For Many Users, a Sense of Urgency
As is often the case with a new, emerging open-source category, some
users have a greater sense of urgency than others to make the move to
open-source IT management, depending primarily on the business imperatives
they face and their comfort level with open source. The companies moving
aggressively today to open-source IT management often fit into at least
one of the following categories:

• Facing a corporate mandate to lower IT costs
  significantly: seeking ways to manage IT assets more efficiently in
  order to pull money out of their IT operations.
• Involved in a merger or acquisition: looking for a simpler, lower cost
  approach to monitoring and managing a newly merged IT
  environment.
• Experienced a significant crash or failure: recently learned the hard
  way that the existing proprietary system is not capable of delivering
  the performance promised; tend to find the low cost, rigorous peer-review and testing of
  open source compelling.
• Public sector organizations facing an open-source
  mandate: required by law to include open-source products in their software evaluation and
  selection process.
• Actively seeking a manager of managers solution: proactively looking
  for a means to tie various IT management solutions together so they can
  see everything in one place.
• New CIO committed to open source: a change in IT management brings in
  new leadership that understands the advantages of open
  source.

Today's open-source IT management solutions have a track record of
addressing customer needs in each one of these scenarios.
Delivering on the Promise
As the market for open-source IT management solutions accelerates
toward mainstream adoption, companies will move at their own pace to
embrace this new category of open-source solutions. Some will take a
cautious, incremental approach while other companies already have opted
for a more aggressive, wholesale switch to an open-source IT management
system. But regardless of how a company chooses to adopt this new model,
the benefits are the same--greater flexibility, faster deployment
and highly competitive functionality, all at a fraction of the cost of
the proprietary frameworks that have long dominated this market.
Case Study: AutoTradeCenter Gets Results by Going Open Source

AutoTradeCenter, Inc. (ATC) manages customized, private-label Web sites for auto
manufacturers and financial institutions, including companies such as
Ford Credit, American Honda Finance and DaimlerChrysler Financial
Services. Given the nature of its business and its focus on hosted
Internet solutions, ATC needs a reliable and highly available network
to deliver quality service to its growing list of global customers.

In 2001, ATC did not have a solution in place to monitor its network,
servers or applications. Instead, the IT team addressed network issues
only after they became a problem. In some cases, customers provided the
first notification to the team that the customer's site was down.

To compound this problem, ATC was enjoying a rapidly expanding customer
base. As the company added more customers, the IT infrastructure was taxed
with a growing number of buyers, sellers, searches and orders. According
to Jorge Borbolla, ATC's CIO, a single new customer can mean 1,000
incremental network activities each day. ATC's IT team lacked adequate
visibility into the network infrastructure; they couldn't track usage
trends and therefore couldn't plan well for anticipated growth.

In early 2002, Borbolla determined that the company needed an effective
network monitoring solution that would satisfy two objectives. First, it
must provide notification of any problem before it affects the customer,
and second, the system had to monitor service level agreements that
stipulated 99% uptime.
Solution: Open Source IT Management
Initially, Borbolla and his team evaluated commercial monitoring
solutions, but these were going to cost six figures simply to get
started. After testing several open-source solutions, the IT team
turned to Nagios and was impressed with its escalation and notification
features. Borbolla also understood the need for a smart installation, and
elected to work with GroundWork Open Source Solutions to ensure accurate
configuration and tuning. Today, GroundWork Monitor, which extends Nagios
with several open-source components and advanced features, evaluates
everything from network connectivity, CPU loads, database availability
and the status of each custom Web site.
Results: Higher Availability, Stability and Visibility
Since investing in open-source for IT infrastructure monitoring, ATC
has realized significant results. Although the company battled outages
and slow network response times in the past, ATC now is achieving more
than 99% uptime, a figure that exceeds the company's service level
agreements. This higher availability also is improving productivity
within ATC, because mission-critical applications such as e-mail and file
storage systems are more reliable.

Using an open-source IT management approach also has improved ATC's
ability to detect problems before they happen. Previously, the IT
department usually would hear about network outages from customers. Now,
it is able to detect and fix problems before they become serious
enough to impact service.

Robert Fanini is the founder and CEO of
GroundWork Open Source
Solutions, a leading provider of open-source IT management
solutions, based in Emeryville, CA.