HP Revs Up OpenView

Seeking to capitalize on the compliance boom, Hewlett-Packard has added advanced compliance and services-oriented architecture management to its OpenView menu.

HP OpenView Compliance Manager and HP OpenView SOA Manager are slated to be unveiled this week at the vendor's annual HP Software Forum in Denver, said Todd DeLaughter, vice president and general manager of HP's management software organization, Palo Alto, Calif.

DeLaughter said the offerings will help HP's software organization—which has been bleeding cash due in part to acquisitions over the past two years—to return to profitability by the end of HP's fourth quarter, Oct. 31, 2005. HP software lost $6 million in its first quarter ended May 1, 2005, down from $52 million for the year-ago period.

Available Sept. 5, OpenView Compliance Manager will help business networks save money by applying and automating compliance routines gleaned from HP's own experience in keeping in line with Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations, said DeLaughter.

Jeff Jamieson, vice president of sales and marketing at Whitlock Infrastructure Solutions, an HP VAR in South Riding, Va., said OpenView Compliance Manager will reduce costs associated with compliance. "The common customer thread we have been hearing for six to eight months is the CFO going to IT and saying, 'I spent X on this compliance audit process and I will not spend that next year. You in IT will have to cut costs,' " said Jamieson.

DeLaughter agreed. "Unless you put tools in place and automate certain compliance tasks, you will spend the same on your audit budget next year as you did this year," he said.

HP OpenView SOA Manager, for its part, promises to give IT organizations a common tool to improve and lower the cost of developing and delivering applications and services, said DeLaughter.

The idea that SOA Manager could spur adoption of SOA technology in the enterprise and perhaps start trickling down into the upper midmarket intrigues Michael Morris, CTO of MW2 Consulting, an OpenView VAR in Sunnyvale, Calif. Morris said the arrival of SOA Manager couldn't be better timed considering the veritable explosion of Web services architectures and related technology.

"Most of the product vendors like Oracle, SAP, Siebel all offer Web services out-of-the-box. So for us, SOA Manager is a critical addition," said Morris. Though not yet finalized, pricing for Compliance Manager will tentatively start at $250,000. OpenView SOA Manager starts at $10,000 per agent, with a services platform starting at $25,000, the company said.