IBM has started making some of its enterprise-level software products ready for use with the network management system made by its subsidiary Tivoli Systems, the companies said this week.
Among the products IBM plans to make "Tivoli-ready" by the end of the year are its MQSeries, CICS, DB/2, and Universal Data Base (UDB) as well as the Domino Web server software made by Lotus.
The announcement means that when a customer buys one of the Tivoli-ready IBM products it will work with Tivoli's management system straight out of the box, the companies said.
The success of Tivoli depends in part on its ability to persuade software and hardware makers to build support for its management system in their products, and the news that IBM will make its software Tivoli-compatible is a boost for the company, although not an entirely unpredictable one.
Much of IBM's hardware already supports the Tivoli Management Framework, including IBM's new desktop PCs, Thinkpad notebooks and NetFinity servers. IBM's said also today that its RS/6000, AS/400 and S/390 servers will be Tivoli-ready by the end of the year.
In April this year industry heavyweights Intel, Microsoft and 3Com added their names to the roster of companies that support the management software.
