GroundWork aims at enterprise network monitoring

By Dave Bailey

Mar 27 2008 3:03PM

Open source network management software vendor GroundWork has announced an enterprise-focused network monitoring package and a new version of their flagship GroundWork Monitor package, 5.2.

The new open source enterprise package, GroundWork Monitor Enterprise has a modular design giving horizontal integration with “Third-party help desk, ticketing, asset tracking and CMDB systems that are often already deployed in enterprise datacenters,” said GroundWork.

GroundWork Monitor Enterprise includes modules such as network discovery, traffic graphing and one for protocol analysis. The system can also collect Netflow and sFlow data from routers or switches to aid in trending and visualising network traffic flows. Network utilisation and status of LAN and WAN connections can also be displayed and the system allows IT managers to drill down deeper to access local traffic details for network subnets.

New in version 5.2 of GroundWork Monitor is the auto-discovery/auto-configuration feature which locates and identifies systems using simple network management protocol (SNMP) and the cross platform NMAP security scanner. GroundWork Monitor 5.2 also has a low latency event console, new enterprise performance reports, and updates to the dashboard functionality.

A big plus for firms is that their software integrates with major enterprise IT management packages said GroundWork Open Source chief executive David Lilly, “Average cost savings of around 80 percent is a huge factor, but enterprise customers are selecting GroundWork because our open source solutions integrate seamlessly with existing systems like Tivoli and OpenView. Lilly said that GroundWork had the ability to scale to more than 10,000 servers across distributed locations worldwide.

GroundWork also has a freely downloadable community edition suitable for SMBs which, since it shares a common code base with the Enterprise edition allows users to seamlessly upgrade if they wish.