HP Layoffs: GroundWork Open Source Smells Blood
Sometimes, bad or stressful news for one company spells opportunity for another. Consider the situation at GroundWork Open Source, a systems management company that competes with Hewlett-Packard OpenView. Apparently, GroundWork Open Source is looking to capitalize on the layoff news out of HP. Here’s a look.
GroundWork says its systems management platform can deliver an 87 percent total cost savings vs. OpenView over a three-year period. Sure, the research was sponsored by GroundWork.
But GroundWork’s sense of timing — announcing the research a day after the HP layoff news — was dramatic and savvy.
Frankly, The VAR Guy is surprised HP has ignored opportunities to position OpenView for emerging markets such as the managed services industry. And now, a growing list of software companies — from GroundWork to Nimsoft — promotes lower-cost alternatives to OpenView.
Reality Check
The VAR Guy isn’t suggesting that VARs and service providers will completely abandon OpenView and other traditional enterprise management platforms (BMC, CA, IBM Tivoli).
However, GroundWork has successfully recruited a few OpenView partners. And Nimsoft has announced record growth in recent quarters.
Translation: HP better not get too distracted by its own layoffs, because rivals in the systems management market smell blood.
Only half of the layoffs were from HP, with the other half from EDS which was acquired in their bid to become like IBM in managing IT resources for clients. I think many of the layoffs will come from duplication between the companies. And as most companies do with layoffs, they keep their best people and utilize it as an opportunity to get rid of weak employees. Of course you can never factor out the stupidity of management that are oblivious to the actual work being done under them, along with their harebrained schemes to cut costs, 😉
On a purely technical note, if you want a Nagios derivative take a look at Opsview (http://www.opsview.org/). I reckon its got a much better overall interface when compared to Groundwork plus some nifty features for hierarchical installations.
Or, if you would prefer something more reasonable, but supported, you should look at PacketTrap – http://www.PacketTrap.com. Not based on open source, but 80% of the functionality at 10% of the cost. They have a new product on the market called Perspective. We are pushing it as a strong alternative.
Patrick the PacketTrap Pusher.
I found the following comment on computerworld… Maybe Nimsoft isn’t the next big thing after all…:
I am a Nimsoft customer and have been informed by my account manager of serious cuts at Nimsoft. This surprised me very much as their CEO and VP EMEA confirmed to me in an executive meeting that the company was cashflow positive made significant benefit and is the fastest growing company in their space…
I work for a leading UK bank that recently replaced HP OV by Nimsoft, however as you understand I prefer to stay anonymous.
Nimsoft today anounced to more than 50% of their UK based employees that they have been made redundant. Employees were sent home Friday afternoon, after Tim Bisley, VP of EMEA informed them that their services were not longer required. Employees will be called back for a 1 to 1 discussion in the next couple of weeks.
These redundancies follow a string of previous redundancies over the past few months. Previously the Nimsoft Marketing and Communication department in EMEA were made redundant and the southern European operation were closed.
It is expected that the German operation will be closed as well but due to employment legislation this final action will take longer to implement. Further it is expected that the UK field sales team will be further reduced from 4 to 2 Sales executives. The support and pre-sales department are also affected with a number of redundancies.
A BMC executive in the UK confirmed to me that they are considering acquiring Nimsoft in the near future. The Nimsoft executives did not deny nor confirm.