Last year at this time, the momentum was solidly behind the point tools. IT managers slammed platforms and frameworks from the likes of Computer Associates and Tivoli, bemoaning their high price tags and implementation headaches. So the industry went back to basics. This year, expect the pendulum to swing the other way toward consolidation of these point products. Part of the reason for the shift is the tremendous growth of e-business.
Business transactions conducted electronically can be complex, to say the least.
If there is a problem with such transactions, an IT manager has to know about it and pin down the problem's source. But to do so, the manager has to see all the parts of the transaction - including what's happening on the servers, on the network and in the applications. Point tools often provide small windows into parts of the network and systems involved, but they don't give the whole picture. Traditional frameworks have claimed to provide the whole picture for years, but they haven't really delivered. The idea now is to grab the point tools that do well at individual functions and tie them together.