One Step Back for Integration

Paul Korzeniowski

The inability of major network management platform vendors to agree on a common API and database schema has dealt a setback to the Management Information Consortium's efforts to resolve network management integration and incompatibility issues. The MIC (see December 1994 BYTE, page 114) sought to address the thorny issue of consolidating network management information that's stored in different DBMSes into a common repository, but four major backers, Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and SunSoft have withdrawn from the consortium, citing a number of reasons. "The end result is bad news for users," says David Passmore, president of the consulting firm Decisis (Herndon, VA). "Gathering management information will continue to be more difficult than it should be."

Companies tha t supply network equipment (hubs, routers, and adapter cards) are the driving force behind the MIC. In the early 1990s, equipment vendors such as Bay Networks, Cisco Systems, Chipcom, and others began developing network management applications that ran on network management frameworks like IBM's NetView, Sun's SunNet Manager, and HP's OpenView. The services (i.e., standard APIs) that each of these frameworks (aka platforms) provided reduced the effort required of network equipment suppliers to write their network management applications.

However, the platform approach has flaws. Applications running on a platform often store management information in different DBMSes, and network managers need a common way to access that information. Another problem was that third parties still had to spend a lot of money porting their software from one platform to a second or third. The MIC was trying to overcome these problems by developing an interface capable of pulling data from disparate DBMSes. Having all platfo rms conform to the interface would have also made the porting issue simpler.

Initially, the four companies all joined the MIC and pledged to support its work. But an official at HP cited a number of issues that quickly arose, including concerns over needless duplication with data integration efforts of other standards organizations and the MIC's slow progress. Decisis's Passmore says a more likely explanation for the break is that network management platform vendors want to differentiate their wares rather than have them conform to standards.

James Corrigan, MIC chairman and president of Ki Networks (Columbia, MD), says the MIC will forge ahead with its standards and work at the same time to avoid duplicating the efforts of other groups, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force. Corrigan expects MIC-compliant products to ship this year. However, the standards will have little impact if platform vendors do not support them. Right now, they do not have any plans to do so.