While the retail costs of computers are falling, says Morris, the total costs of managing them are going up. We needed to focus on the value of ownership and on finding ways to minimize the loss of time and effort in keeping systems up and running. Given its importance, systems management has become a growing business in its own right. In March 1996, IBM bought Tivoli, an Austin, Texas, company that specializes in enterprisewide systems management for large accounts and that is now starting to develop solutions for smaller businesses as well. SMTI is focusing on several key areas.
Visualization is another research objective of the joint project.
SMTI is also looking at ways of allowing end users to manage certain tasks by means of automated support software. And a research effort headed by a team at the Zurich Research Laboratory is developing Java agents that can travel over the network and report back on the state of routers and other devices. This new approach represents a vision for simplifying the management of client machines across networks, encompassing individual consumers all the way up to the enterprise level. The project grew out of the recognition several years ago by Morris and Norm Pass, manager of cyberspace technology and applications at Almaden, that one of the more taxing problems PC users have to deal with is updating or replacing software or hardware components. This new framework is an attempt to implement such a deal.