Systems Center Ltd, Reading, Berkshire, says the sale of its DB2 product line is all part of the company’s strategy of focusing on managing total computing systems. Stephen Tunstall, director of System Software Business Management for Europe, emphasises that the company’s database products were good and so it’s not a case of dumping a product line. Nor has it to do with tight resources, as Candle would like to think. One could certainly be forgiven for being confused as to why the company thinks its database activities are so removed from a total systems management strategy but, where one might wonder if Systems Center isn’t putting all its eggs in one basket by concentrating on its Net/Master product – especially now that IBM has enhanced its competitive NetView software and is thus threatening Systems Center’s market share – Tunstall assured Computergram that Net/Master will continue to win new customers because, being non processor-specific, it offers the ability to link to systems other than IBM. And Systems Center has just made its first move to demonstrate its commitment to the AS/400 market since it took over Informed Management Environment Inc in September (CI No 1,506) by announcing its AS/Center automated systems administration package for the IBM AS/400 family of midrange computers. Systems Center says the new software package, which sits above the AS/400 and automatically manages its functions and utilities, will enable executive, management or operational personnel to be automatically informed of problems or exceptions on the AS/400 or of intervention reqirements. The company claims that IBM’s promise that the AS/400 is easy to get up and running and straightforward to use just doesn’t hold water, and that many companies today are having problems with their systems, for example with regard to backups. Expertise in AS/400 operation, says Systems Center, is rare, so the AS/Center package has been developed to automate critical systems management functions that traditionally required skilled technicians. It protects against potential disasters with a total back-up strategy, provides a structured recovery procedure, report and print management, and provides an easy, systematic method for reclaiming wasted disk space. AS/Center – available now at a cost ranging from UKP4,000 to run on a bottom of the range system, to UKP15,500 for a top of the range B70 – is the first of a series of AS/400 products form Systems Center, designed to link the AS/400 user base into the growing range of systems supported through the company’s Net/Master and Network DataMover. This will enable AS/400 customers to match their systems management strategy to their own organisation. From the third quarter of 1991, the AS/400 will occupy a position alongside that of DEC and Tandem wherby using Systems Center software it can be managed and operated as part of a mixed-vendor, multi-platform network. The AS/400 products are claimed to solve a similar set of problems to those addressed by the company’s other systems management products SYS/Master and VM/Center II. Further networking strategies are to be announced later this year following the acquisition of specialist Unix company Unitech Software Inc. When asked what he thought IBM’s plans for the AS/400 might be, Tunstall said he didn’t think even IBM knew the answer to that. He suggested IBM might introduce AS/400 as part of a centralised network, but said he didn’t know how this would be implemented. And Tunstall reckons IBM is equally unsure about what to do with Unix, saying IBM is still at the toe-in-the-water stage.
