Some customers, however, still seem open to the consolidation of management functions a framework offers. “Ideally, we like as few tools as possible to watch all the vendors,” says Chris DeMarche, chief technical officer at Verio Inc. (
http://www.verio.com), an Internet services company that is buying terabit routers from Juniper.
And other industry sources think that if any vendor can succeed in staking a framework claim in optical networks, it’s Aprisma. “Spectrum has stronger capabilities for uniting information about traditional electrical and optical networks than its competitors,” says Dennis Drogseth, director at Enterprise Management Associates
http://www.enterprisemanagement.com), a consultancy. “Spectrum does a better job of integrating management information. Customers don’t have to choose separate platforms for different types of networks.” Other framework providers, most notably Hewlett-Packard (
http://www.hp.com), offer a series of separate management consoles for systems, carrier networks, and traditional enterprise networks.
But Drogseth admits there’s no guarantee of success for Spectrum. “Moving into the optical network environment is an aggressive but natural extension for Spectrum. But it’s not a slam dunk.”
By Mary Jander, special to
Light Reading http://www.lightreading.com
