Axon abandons its network tool

IT services firm Axon has stopped development of its network management tool AME (Axon Managed Environment), opting instead to sell support tools from US company Altiris.

Axon developed AME to automate the deployment of new software into organisations and manage changes.

In 2001 it turned it into a product, with the help of a $600,000 grant from Technology New Zealand, and spun off a separate company to market it.

Axon general manager Scott Green said the cost of continuing development made it commercially risky.

"We were in the market before any other vendor had a workable solution, so it was a green-fields opportunity," Green said.

There were now competing offerings from vendors with bigger development teams, marketing budgets and worldwide reach.

Axon was discussing migration strategies with AME customers.

"It still works and there is no great rush, but there will come a time when they will need to switch."

He said New Zealand firms who wanted to package and sell intellectual property might be better off developing boutique solutions rather than a general utility like AME.

Technology New Zealand manager Suki Siriwardena said Axon performed to the terms of its grant, which matched its own development spend.

"We try to do our best to assess the commercial potential of everything we fund, but there are risks in any investment," she said.

Axon consulting manager Daryl Grauman said the company benefited from the AME experience.

"It helped us establish best-practice processes and the best understanding of managed environments."

He said Altiris, which has development centres in Sydney and Utah, was chosen as a replacement after extensive research into substitutes, which included Microsoft SMS, Computer Associates' Unicenter, IBM's Tivoli tools, HP OpenView and Marimba.

"The nice thing is it does not lock us into any hardware or operating system," he said.

"It can manage Linux and Unix as well as the Microsoft environment."

Grauman said Altiris could scale from small sites to organisations with thousands of PCs.

It could also manage the data and settings on hand-held computers and smart phones used by field staff.

Axon customer DB Breweries has replaced a mix of tools with Altiris, which it now uses for network and remote user support, help desk and licence management.

DB information systems manager Andrew Cammell said the company has 440 machines at 17 sites with five support staff.

Altiris allowed two people to upgrade all desktops to Office 2003 in three days.

"We hadn't done an upgrade before.

"Whenever someone got a machine they stuck with what they had, so we had a mix of Windows 97, 2000 and XP," Cammell said.

"We also have about 200 people in the small offices using Windows terminals running Citrix."

AME'S DEMISE 

* Local developer unable to match big rivals' resources.

* Product's abandonment follows $600,000 Technology NZ grant.

* Talks being held with customers about migration strategies.