What is not known and is not mentioned in this article and elsewhere are the the background changes made to Director’s engine and how it will be developed and easily integrated with other tools in the future and vice versa.

I think to say that it’s emulating HP’s Insight Manager is not a fair comment. It proceeds from the false presumption that the tool ‘competes’ with HP Insight Manager, when in reality, they’re mutually exclusive; one manages IBM systems while the other HP, respectively.

On the odd occasion, customers of both companies have a need to consolidate their management interfaces and more often than not, this is actually IBM Director, rather than HP Insight Manager. Not because of its looks but because of the FEATURES that IBM Director offers are way above and beyond what HP Insight Manager can.

Granted HP Insight Manager is a capable tool and robust – doing a good job to support HP ProLiant systems. But lately, its features are bloated and it’s still doing a very simple job, whereas IBM Director has expanded beyond Insight Manager’s dreams!

IBM Director is also much more friendly, when it comes to integrating non-IBM systems that require management. With Director v5.x the ability to manage “agent-less” systems is possible, giving customers the opportunity for the first time to ‘push’ all software updates required to those systems. And this goes beyond just meeting prerequisites, like device drivers and BIOS/firmware updates. IBM Director’s Software Distribution Premium Edition does a great deal more than that!

On several occasions, customers of HP Insight Manager retire it, in favour of IBM Director, to consolidate their management interface into one and IBM Director tends to be chosen in 99% of all such cases, in my experience. But always remember, that this requirement is a very small percentage but when it’s needed, it can be done and IBM Director rises to the challenge very easily.

Coming back to Systems Director 6 and it’s development. One of the major enhancements is the fact that it’s now based on Web 2.0 architecture, leaping way over what HP Insight Manager can offer, with its rigid UI.

It’s code is based on SOA technology and development techniques, making it very easy to develop plug-ins, as well as third-party contributions and indeed customer-designed extensions. Making Systems Director 6 based on SOA also means that it’s much easier to bug fix any problems, due to the modular nature of SOA software design, as well as being much more flexible to anticipate future changes and requirements.

In addition, Systems Director 6′s Common Agent design means that it can share code, space, firewall ports, communication, data, inventory, events and many other aspects with IBM’s other management tools, such as the Tivoli range. The Common Agent will also be used as part of a larger design drive to have other IBM software make use of it (or at least integrate with it) in a very natural and easy way.

All of this combined, as well as other planned plug-ins for next year (such as “native” support for non-IBM systems and integration of these), makes Systems Director 6 a vanguard in what IBM will be offering in 2009 and beyond. It’s ability to morph the code and extend it put it in a very natural position to take advantage of all new technologies in the systems management space, as well as offering best-of-breed tools and features.

Hope you find this useful.