Key Systems Vendors to Deploy Common Agent Technology -- Companies Band
Together in Support of Open Standards

CUPERTINO, CA; RALEIGH, NC; COLUMBIA, MD; and MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA --September
19, 1995--Working together to meet customer demands for manageability and
interoperability within the desktop computing environment, Apple Computer,
Inc., IBM Corporation, Ki NETWORKS, Inc., and Sun Microsystems today
announced they are implementing common agent technology, which allows the
collection of management information from diverse hardware and software
components to be consolidated and synthesized. Because this common agent
technology includes support for existing management protocols, such as
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and the Desktop Management
Interface (DMI), customers' current investments in management platforms
and agents are protected, while increased support for DMI-enabled product
implementations is facilitated. Meanwhile, component vendors benefit from
a common instrumentation standard across different operating systems to
instrument and register their components so they can be well managed.

WHAT IS COMMON AGENT TECHNOLOGY?

Common agent technology provides a way for DMI-enabled components of
computer systems to be managed in an integrated fashion, along with
components already supported by an existing agent standard. The DMI helps
customers manage their desktop computing environment, which often includes
products and management protocols from many different vendors, by
providing a common management framework. The DMI provides a standard
interface that handles communications between any management applications
and the system components, including hardware on the desktop (adapters,
printers, ...) and the client/server software (operating systems, servers,
applications, ...).

The implementation of common agent technology being announced today is an
SNMP implementation that supports integrated management of DMI-enabled
components and SNMP subagents. It includes a DMI service layer and a
mapping layer that converts DMI information to SNMP. Because this common
agent technology implementation encompasses both SNMP and DMI, it allows
existing SNMP managers to support today's SNMP resources, along with the
growing number of DMI-enabled resources, in a consistent and
well-integrated manner. This protects customers and vendors' current
investments in SNMP, while expanding the coverage to include DMI-enabled
resources. It also protects component vendors' investments in DMI, as the
DMTF defines the Remote DMI (RDMI) specification. Expected to be completed
by year-end 1995, the RDMI specification ultimately will provide a
standard way for DMI information to be accessed across networks by remote
management consoles.

APPROACH FINDS BROAD-BASED INDUSTRY SUPPORT

Representatives of organizations throughout the industry voiced their
mutual support for this standards-based approach for achieving integrated
management of SNMP- and DMI-enabled network and systems components.

CITICORP - "The technology infrastructure at Citibank is on of the largest
among global banking institutions," said George Sullivan, vice president
and director of Citicorp's Systems and Network Management Resource Center.
"The application of technology to provide the best possible products for
our customers, with rapid innovation in response to constantly changing
markets, absolutely depends on a consistent automated management
infrastructure that is enterprise-wide (globally capable in Citibank's
case) in scope. We are delighted to see the advance of the common agent
technology, as it will bring us closer to seeing platforms, operating
systems and applications capable of being managed as they come
"out-of-the-box" with more of the automated pushed to the target rather
than the actual manager. The opportunity to instrument our own customer
applications in a consistent manner, where the core functions come from
the common agent, will be something to really look forward to."

DESKTOP MANAGEMENT TASK FORCE - "DMI, together with SNMP and a mapping
function, provides existing management consoles with immediate access to
DMI information on desktops and servers," said Ed Arrington, chairman of
the DMTF. "This effort will speed hardware and software implementations of
DMI and can lower the cost of ownership for desktops and servers by
providing customers with true cross-platform desktop management."

HELP DESK INSTITUTE - "DMI-compliance is particularly important if your
support organization needs to be well integrated, merging functions such
as LAN's, end-user support and field service support," said Patrick
Bultema, chairman of the Help Desk Institute. "Common agent technology
implementations, such as those announced today, provide a vital link for
integrating existing SNMP management capabilities with desktop management.
Such integration is essential to the successful evolution toward full DMI
management solutions. Anyone making a technology buying decision risks
making a serious blunder by buying anything that is not DMI-compliant."

MADGE NETWORKS - "Customers welcome the availability of agent technology
that allows them to easily integrate standards-based desktop management
into their networks, using their chosen management platform, without
impacting their existing configuration. DMI-enabled desktop components can
be remotely managed by legacy management systems, which allows an easy
migration path for customers. Since 1994, Madge Token Ring adapters have
included a universal DMI agent as an integral part of the LAN Support
Software suite of network drivers shipped with each Smart 16/4 Ringnode.
This agent provides network administrators with access to an extensive
library of information from any Madge adapter, irrespective of location,
host PC type or network operating system," said Richard Harris, product
marketing director for Token Ring adapters, with Madge Networks' Desktop
Product Division.

NORTHEAST CONSULTING RESOURCES, INC. - "This announcement is an important
step forward in making the good work of the DMTF available in real
implementations," said Jim Herman, vice president, Northeast Consulting
Resources, Inc. "Standardization of agent technology is essential to
effective management of complex multivendor environments. Linking the DMTF
technology with today's SNMP platforms will widen the range of information
available to the installed base of management systems and make compliance
with DMTF immediately useful for component vendors."

NOVELL, INCORPORATED - "Customers have clearly communicated their
preference for standards-based solutions, and Novell has reflected this in
the end-to-end management capabilities we offer in ManageWise," said Steve
Dauber, product line manager of Novell's Management Products Division.
"This announcement continues the DMTF's progress toward making DMI the de
facto desktop management standard. As a charter member of the DMTF, Novell
is fully committed to supporting the DMI standard in Novell's operating
systems, applications and management products, making DMI information
available via SNMP."

WHEN AND HOW WILL THIS TECHNOLOGY BE IMPLEMENTED?

Various vendors, including Apple, IBM, Ki NETWORKS, and Sun Microsystems,
will implement management of DMI-enabled components via SNMP, which allows
management by any vendor's SNMP management server.

APPLE COMPUTER, INC.

"We believe that our customers' single most important requirement for
desktop management is the support of multiple environments, through the
implementation of open standards," said Garry Hornbuckle, manager, Mac OS
Communications. "Given the broad adoption and deployment of SNMP, this
announcement provides the missing link to tie network and desktop
infrastructure into a cohesive whole. More specifically, IBM's common
agent technology implementation could, in future products, be combined
with Apple's already-shipping implementation of SNMP -- MacSNMP -- to
allow integration of DMTF DMI with Mac OS."

IBM CORPORATION

IBM's implementation of the common agent technology, which is based on
SNMP, will be delivered as the SystemView Agent to be made available on a
variety of IBM and non-IBM platforms, including OS/2, AIX, Windows 3.1,
Windows NT and Windows 95. Initial delivery of the SystemView Agent has
begun with a Beta program for OS/2 in August 1995. IBM also will be
licensing its common agent technology to other systems vendors to
encourage the propagation of management for desktops.

Today, IBM has the DMI Service Layer piece of the common agent technology
running on OS/2 2.1+, AIX, Windows NT and Windows 95. In addition, IBM has
implemented, or is in the process of implementing, DMI support in a
variety of products, including its Token-Ring and Ethernet LAN adapters,
PC Systems (PC300 and PC700) and Pennant Systems products.

IBM will make its DMI Service Layer toolkit available on the SystemView
Advance Team home page on the World Wide Web. The toolkit, which consists
of the DMI Service Layer, a MIF browser and samples, will provide support
for OS/2 2.0 or later, AIX 4.1, Windows 95 and Windows NT.

"A management system can only be as good as the agents it supports," said
Lynn Wilczak, director of SystemView Stratgey and Plans, IBM Networking
Software Division. "Making it easy for component vendors to instrument
their components to DMI will result in better management solutions for
customers. As DMI is fully adopted by the industry, customers who buy
DMI-enabled products will finally be able to consistently manage their
distributed systems, adding products and management applications in a
uniform way -- because they will speak a common open language. This new
technology allows us to provide, with other leading systems vendors, a
truly open structure; and it allows SystemView to provide more
comprehensive multivendor management, including support for Windows
environments."

KI NETWORKS

"Ki NETWORKS is highly supportive of IBM's implementation of common agent
technology, based on DMI and SNMP standards. Ki will be able to easily
extend SystemView's enterprise management to include DECnet, LAT, OpenView
Systems, HP-UX, VAX/VMS and Digital UNIX with this technology," said Jim
Corrigan, president and CEO, Ki NETWORKS, Inc.

Ki's common agent technology implementation on HP-UX and HP OpenView will
be available by December 1995 and will be based on licensed IBM common
agent code, including the SNMP mapper. The Digital UNIX OSF/1
implementation will be available by 2nd quarter 1996.

SUN MICROSYSTEMS

"As a founder of the DMTF, and having shipped more enterprise SNMP
management systems than anyone in the industry with our Solstice products,
Sun has an active interest in widespread implementation of those
standards," said Brian Miles, group marketing manager for SunSoft. "The
only way to ensure lower costs of ownership in network computing is to
encourage the development of standard management agents from now on. This
is going to be done with the common agent. SunSoft will will make
available a version of the common agent in 1996, available for Solaris on
SPARC or x86."

 
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