Boole & Babbage Inc is making a play for the ever-expanding Windows NT market by making the latest version of its service level management software, CommandPost 4, available on the operating system for the first time. The California-based mainframe systems management company said the announcement was continuing the progression of the company’s direction to Windows NT. Gary Read, the company’s senior director of client/server marketing said this was a particularly significant product upgrade. As well as offering NT integration, the new version of CommandPost includes new agents, or power modules, that will allow the software to manage a number of additional applications including SAP and Oracle’s ERP software and IBM’s AS400. It also integrates with all the major network and systems management solutions, including Tivoli’s TME 10 and Hewlett Packard’s OpenView software. Read said this meant that companies could use CommandPost 4 as a central repository into which all data from the around network could be fed. He added that the data could also be accessed from any Windows 95, 98 or NT workstation running Netscape or Internet Explorer. Boole & Babbage’s announcement was welcomed by The Meta Group, who said that users were increasingly turning to event consolidation products as a way of integrating heterogeneous environments. Although the group has previously criticized CommandPost for its tricky installation procedure it added that the new version had addressed this downside with improved ease-of-use features.
