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SPECTRUM gets SLM, interoperability with Cisco and FORE.
REPORT ID: 180413-0003-01.NV
VENDOR IMPORTANCE RATING: Very High
REPORT DATE:April 16, 1998
INDUSTRY IMPORTANCE RATING: Very High
ANALYST: C. Nicoll
CURRENT PERSPECTIVE RATING: Very Positive
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[From the vendor press release]:"April 13, 1998 -- Cabletron Systems announced the introduction of SPECTRUM 5.0 and a new series of advanced applications targeted at the rapidly growing service-level management marketplace. The new suite of products potentially allows customers to better define, manage and improve efficiencies of valuable IT services--including business-critical applications like e-commerce and SAP--for both the enterprise and service provider environments.
Today's announcements complement the recently announced SPECTRUM Data Warehouse, which extends SPECTRUM's capabilities for capacity planning, accounting, trending and design. SPECTRUM 5.0 offers a new, industry-unique capability to help service providers better manage SLA commitments over wide area networks, and allows enterprise I/S to better manage wide area costs.
Cabletron is also introducing new products and functions that address multi-vendor switch networks including intelligent topology, capacity planning, bandwidth management, switch provisioning and usage-based accounting. To deliver on these capabilities, Cabletron is introducing a new family of products: SPECTRUM ATM Services Manager, SPECTRUM VLAN Services Manager and SPECTRUM Remote Access Services Manager."
ANALYTICAL SUMMARY:
We are positive on this announcement for the following reasons:
The modules and relationships in this announcement further support Cabletron's positioning of SPECTRUM as a multi-vendor solution, and provide a strong basis for service level and business process management in the enterprise.
This announcement is significantly important to the industry, and competitors will likely respond to the innovative use of data warehousing, modeling and business process management.
This announcement is of very high importance to Cabletron as it represents SPECTRUM's entry into the multivendor as well as Service Level Management markets, and its success would bolster a sagging company financial picture.
VENDOR NAME: Cabletron Systems
SYMBOL: CS Day Prior Day Of Day After 52H 52L
Close: 13 5/8 13 5/16 13 7/16 46 1/2 12 5/8
Change: - 9/16 - 5/16 + 1/8
Volume (100's): 14441 10902 8863
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ANALYSIS:
VENDOR IMPORTANCE RATING: Very High.
This announcement is of very high importance to Cabletron.
This set of announcements establishes SPECTRUM as a multivendor SLM system. This positioning is important to Cabletron as it expands the original role of SPECTRUM beyond Cabletron's products, and creates a viable competitor for industry leader HP OpenView.
Acceptance as a multivendor management tool creates new market opportunities for Cabletron.
Cabletron may be positioning SPECTRUM to be spun off into its own subsidiary to further create a "arms-length" view of the management platform versus the equipment side of the company.
INDUSTRY IMPORTANCE RATING: Very High.
This is an important announcement to the industry, and we expect that there will be response due to Spectrums new capabilities.
The features and functions in SPECTRUM 5.0 will prompt other management vendors to position their products relative to what SPECTRUM now offers.
The strong emphasis on end-to-end SLM and the availability of agents for a wide variety of platforms and functions challenges other vendors to match the scope of SPECTRUM 5.0's reach. HP OpenView's continues to be well positioned as the incumbent.
Network Managers who previously had minimal choices other than HP's industry leading OpenView now have a viable alternative.
CURRENT PERSPECTIVE RATING: Very Positive.
We are very positive on this announcement from Cabletron. Rather than get into the specific details of each of the modules announced, we are positive on the direction Cabletron is taking with SPECTRUM, and the integration of unique capabilities in the enterprise management space.
Enterprise network managers have long relied on various element management solutions sitting side-by-side (management by swivel chair). Usually a reporting package (such as Concord) is used to tie various sources of information together at a network reporting level. Umbrella managers such as HP OpenView have been used to provide a common point of reference for
troubleshooting and network operations. Tivoli and CA Unicenter are typically focused on the management of enterprise applications, while SPECTRUM is being positioned as a framework for total enterprise management including enterprise applications. A unique position exists for SPECTRUM in encompassing the capabilities of both an OpenView and a Tivoli or CA UniCenter to provide better business process management than is currently available. The reality of this will depend on the applications that are being developed for SPECTRUM 5.0, and how well Cabletron will be able to market, sell and support SPECTRUM as a framework to the largest corporate customers that are Tivoli, UniCenter and OpenView users. Cabletron will have to convince these customers that the recent turmoil at the head of the company is over and that the company is focused on a sound business strategy.
Cabletron has been able to interest a number of third party development houses in support of the 5.0 announced features, and this is positive news. A wide range of products are or will be available in the near future, addressing such applications as Service Level Management, Business Process Management, and problem resolution case-based libraries. Cabletron's integration with Concord's popular Network Health program gives network managers another reason to move to SPECTRUM. The growing number of vendors providing SPECTRUM applications (while not quite up to the number available for OpenView), should provide an additional level of comfort to network managers who do not want to relay solely on Cabletron for specific applications, as long as these applications are seamlessly integrated.
The level to which these various applications are integrated into SPECTRUM 5.0 will help determine the success of this important release. Integration to the 'knowledge-level' provides a seamless integration with the core system, and offers the greatest benefits in using multiple applications together. As an example, reporting or SLA products should be able to pull from the network alarm statistics information that has been collected to generate availability reports, rather than having to re-poll the entire network. In this case, integration provides the tangible benefit of reducing network management traffic load.
The integration of other vendors products into SPECTRUM will also require cooperation of potentially competing vendors in order to gain the full management advantage. It is highly likely that vendors have implemented key troubleshooting, configuration and/or monitoring toolsets within an enterprise MIB. SPECTRUM management will have to convince companies like
Bay and 3Com that it is in their best interest to open these proprietary MIBs to competitor Cabletron.
We are looking forward to the continuing development of SPECTRUM 5.0 and the applications that will be released in support of it. The architecture, as announced, offers tremendous possibilities. It is incumbent on Cabletron and its business partners to fulfill the promise.
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TOP COMPETITIVE POSITIVES:
We see the following competitive positives in Cabletron's initiative:
Cabletron has followed up positively on its earlier announcement on making Spectrum a multivendor enterprise framework. Consistency of message, and actually doing what has been previously announced help establish credibility in the market.
A clear differentiation is the ability to map alarms to application impact. This clearly notifies network operators of the impact of the network fault on user applications. Business-process management is the next step in network management and SPECTRUM 5.0 seems to have the lead.
Spectrum 5.0 is a very full featured system that integrates several third-party apps, which should help reassure interested network managers that they will not have to rely only on Cabletron for their management applications, or wait a year for a usable system.
TOP COMPETITIVE CONCERNS:
While we are very positive about Cabletron's SPECTRUM offering, we see the following competitive concerns:
HP has a huge installed base of very loyal customers. Cabletron will need to unseat HP and Tivoli at some key (and very visible) installations to garner the kind of notice it will need to be successful against OpenView, Tivoli and UniCenter - a tall task, indeed. Cabletron will need to define very specifically its marketing message in order to differentiate SPECTRUM from these competing systems.
Cabletron will need to convince competing vendors to open their enterprise MIBs to SPECTRUM to provide the greatest functionality and to meet interoperability goals.
Is Cabletron positioning SPECTRUM to be spun off as a subsidiary? If so, this raises many questions regarding the development, sales and support resources SPECTRUM will have access to, post spin-off.
Is the turmoil at the head of Cabletron over?
TOP VENDOR SUPPORT ACTIONS:
Cabletron should consider the following actions in order to boost the appeal of the SPECTRUM initiative:
Cabletron must be able to sell the company as a major player in the enterprise management space, and that CEO Craig Benson is fully committed to making this happen. Previously announced dates and plans will have to be adhered to.
Cabletron will want to add additional key products to the management suite ASAP, to continue the multi-vendor theme. For the ISP market this would include, including Cisco's x600 routers, the new MC3800 products, as well as Ascend's TNT and MAX products.
Cabletron should pursue relationships with the WAN SLM vendors, who have WAN specific and full featured products for integration into SPECTRUM. The use of WAN agents that require consistent polling does not scale well and add an unnecessary load to the network. It may be helpful to work with Concord and use that tie-in to get this information.
TOP COMPETITOR ACTIONS:
We see competitors responding in the following manner:
WAN SLM vendors will highlight the polling and WAN bandwidth necessary to pull SLM from remote sites as there is no ability to store statistics for any length of time. At this time there are no hooks from these systems into SPECTRUM, but since many WAN SLM vendors use Concord as a reporting system, this may serve as a common information point. SPECTRUM is also Concord compatible.
The established players HP, CA and Tivoli will point to their long experience in enterprise management, large installed reference base and lack of vendor ties.
Competitors will want to point out that current multivendor equipment options are limited to choice products from Cisco and FORE. Competing suppliers to the ISPs will note that Ascend's products are key to the ISP market.
TARGET MARKETS: Enterprise networks and ISPs
TOP USER ACTIONS:
Users should consider the following actions:
Users who may be concerned about using a networking-vendor-supplied management system should put aside those concerns relative to Spectrum and take a serious look. The unique use of a data warehouse lends itself to tremendous flexibility in packaging data for reporting, and the SPECTRUM 5.0 product features are highly advanced.
Users who live and die by their network owe it to themselves to call a SPECTRUM sales rep to see how the SPECTRUM SLM capability fits with the user network infrastructure. Careful questions relative to how SPECTRUM works with Sync, Paradyne or Visual Networks need to be addressed, if the user currently has one of those WAN SLM systems. LAN SLM vendors should integrate just fine.
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BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
REPORT ID: 180413-0003-01.NV
EVENT: Cabletron's SPECTRUM Heightens Customer Control
Over Enterprise Networks and Applications
REPORT TYPE: Competitive Intelligence
TYPE OF EVENT: Product Announcement
VENDORS: Cabletron Systems
COMPETITORS: HP, Tivoli, CA, Bay
MARKET SEGMENT: Network Management, Service Management,
TECHNOLOGY: ATM, Ethernet, Frame Relay,
TARGET MARKETS: Enterprise networks and ISPs
DATE OF EVENT: April 13, 1998
DATE OF ANALYSIS:April 16, 1998
Related Reports:
171117-0001-01.NV Cabletron's Data Warehouse Broadens Its SPECTRUM
180316-0006-01.NV Cabletron Heightens Spectrum Awareness
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