News

Open Software Associates Changes Name, Updates Core Product

• By Scott Bekker
• 10/04/2001

"OSA was a great name when we were doing cross-platform development tools, but we've moved on and we're doing exclusively software management," ManageSoft vice president of marketing Graeme Greenhill said Thursday. OSA, which has been around since 1990, has focused on software deployment through its netDeploy Global product, which generally sells to customers with thousands of seats.

The technology creates a central software warehouse, which pushes updated versions of the software to deployment servers. Clients and servers around the enterprise send updated configuration information back to the central server and pull down updates from the deployment servers when necessary.

The next version of the product, ManageSoft 6.0, due sometime this quarter, builds on the concept of the central software warehouse.

"In the past, all [the warehouse has] been is one of many components in our software distribution product. Now we're elevating that to become the core of the product," Greenhill said.

CIOs are beginning to understand that they don't have control of their software assets throughout the company, Greenhill says.

"We've already pretty much got the mechanics of software distribution done. We're moving up the value chain if you like to more of the information management. That's a big part of what the software warehouse is about," Greenhill says. "It's a repository for all the software that's in use throughout the corporation."

One of the most apparent improvements to the software warehouse in ManageSoft 6.0 will be an executive dashboard, Greenhill says.

"It allows you to see at a glance the key performance indicators," he says. "Some of the examples would be: What percentage of all your end user systems have the latest virus signature file? What percentage have the latest Microsoft security updates? What percentage have the minimum required for a Windows XP upgrade."