Tivoli Delivers IT Management Solution
Tivoli Systems Inc. announced Tivoli IT Director 2.1, the next generation of its flagship IT management solution designed from the ground up for companies with hundreds of employees.Initially released last year with support for Microsoft’s Windows NT operating system, the new Tivoli IT Director 2.1 has been expanded to run natively on AS/400 servers, providing organizations the choice to use NT or AS/400 as their primary management server platform. Tivoli IT Director’s enhanced capabilities add client support for Novell NetWare 5.0 and IBM OS/400 V4R4, database support for IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, and continue existing support for Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 95/98, Windows 3.11 and IBM OS/2. In addition, Tivoli IT Director now supports the Common Information Model (CIM) and Desktop Management Interface (DMI) standards leveraging the Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM) initiative for accessing and managing asset information from desktops, servers and applications.Tivoli IT Director 2.1 also provides Microsoft Clustering management support, ensuring higher assurance of critical server availability, even during hardware or software failures. Microsoft Clustering technology, which is a standard service of Windows NT Server, Enterprise Edition, allows customers to combine multiple systems together to appear as a single, unified server. When one system fails, the workload can be re-routed among the other, still-operational systems. As a result, Tivoli IT Director can administer cluster management from the Tivoli IT Director console, monitor and automate NT clusters and provide uninterrupted 24x7 availability for critical business applications.Finally, with a 20 percent lighter footprint and a 50 percent faster Java console than its previous version, Tivoli IT Director 2.1 lessens the impact on system resources and provides customers a more responsive interface to their entire IT environment."As small- to medium-sized businesses become increasingly dependent on key applications for e-business or back office ERP, they face increasingly complex IT environments mixed with PC desktops, multiple AS/400s, NT and network devices," says Karen Smith, Director of AS/400 Solutions Marketing, IBM. "Tivoli IT Director provides AS/400 customers with a solution to help them manage attached clients from a central location, ensuring application availability. Now, AS/400 users that depend on the reliability of AS/400 can run Tivoli IT Director natively as the management solution for their entire IT infrastructure."English language versions of Tivoli IT Director 2.1 will be available from Tivoli distributors and resellers in August. Other language versions, including German, French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Japanese and simplified and traditional Chinese are expected in early November. For a complete list of Tivoli IT Director 2.1 resellers, visit Tivoli’s Web page at www.tivoli.com/products/smb.