Motive gives single view of distributed apps

An emerging trend in application management software is the capability to view distributed applications, deployed on many tiers, as a single entity. Putting the new approach to work, management software vendor Motive will launch three products to help manage distributed applications: Motive Profile, Motive Triage, and Motive Resolution.

The new approach allows application developers to model at least the optimal state of the software in question, as well as its components and dependencies. The model provides an example of how the application should look.

“This is done during configuration. But it can also be done after the application is running,” said Mike Maples, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Motive.

IT can no longer afford to manage applications as if they were discrete elements, said Tim Grieser, vice president of enterprise system management software research at IDC.

Distributed applications have multiple tiers, with an application server on one platform, a database on another platform, and linkage to a Web server for front-end support. Discovering where the servers are, what software is on each server, and how the servers are connected in relation to the applications is the key to managing distributed apps, Grieser said.

All three Motive applications allow developers to identify and model these attributes, relationships, and dependencies during the design stage of the application — or at the test and deploy stage.

Motive Profile detects changes in an application’s configuration. Motive Triage automates problem isolation run books by comparing original settings to current settings. Motive Resolution gives a level-two application support person diagnostic tools and automated repairs against what has changed in the application environment.

Profile is already available. Triage and Resolution will ship next month.