Halcyon Software is making a direct play for i/p cross-platform users with native AIX monitoring capabilities in the latest version of its Network Server Suite.

Donnie MacColl, head of technical services at the Peterborough-based firm, says: "A couple of years ago, we thought that IBM seemed to be pushing AIX more and more and in a lot of places we went, people were saying that they had inherited an AIX box but didn’t really know how to manage it."

MacColl says that AIX expertise tends to gravitate towards larger, AIX-dominated organisations. "There tends to be a presumption that that the people who use i OS can now use AIX which is way, way from the truth. So we’ve found people struggling. Certainly, some big financial institutions have got AIX boxes and no one that really knows them to the same in-depth nature as they do the other platforms."

Such firms include those running Oracle or Unix DB2-driven data warehousing or analytical applications alongside their i-driven processes. "What we did to address that was we wrote our own AIX product in-house but we used our existing Network Service Suite as the front-end to it. So if you want to monitor your CPU, your disk, your memory – the normal things – you don’t need to know AIX at all, you can do it all from a Windows front-end."

Halcyon's Network Server Suite version 6.0 and Enterprise Console tools provide monitoring and automation for AIX, Windows, i OS, SNMP devices and other network components and feature a centralised dashboard view. By crossing over into what was once System p territory, the AIX Server Manager component of Network Server Suite will be competing with the likes of Nimsoft, BMC and even Tivoli. Halcyon says that its solution's native approach sets it apart from the pack. Users can check things like logical groups, logical volumes and physical volumes and keep track of unused disk space with logical volume monitoring.

Halcyon's cross-platform push comes at a time when the traditional distinctions between i and p are segueing into IBM's Power System model. MacColl points to large numbers of AIX-types attending what were originally AS/400 user group events in Australasia and the increased AIX focus at COMMON's recent Reno conference in the U.S. as evidence that the boundaries are blurring. By Halcyon's way of thinking, this can only be a good thing as companies prevaricate less over the future of their System i hardware.

"I think the fact that IBM have made it very easy to have multiple operating systems on the same machine has actually helped the i massively for people that probably hadn’t even considered the i before," says MacColl. "And I think that people are cementing in the i hardware, if you like, especially now that you can run the p on it as well. I think the i’s going to grow, which is something I wouldn’t have said this time last year."