Tivoli to drop IT Director
Tivoli is set to drop IT Director, the small business version of its enterprise management software, by January 2001.
Tivoli is set to drop IT Director, the small business version of its enterprise management software, by January 2001.
Blaming changing market conditions for the move, Karl Freund, senior vice president for marketing at the company, said that worldwide sales of the software had accounted for only 0.5 per cent of total turnover for the previous year.
"IT Director is in a space that is being commoditised. Hardware vendors are increasing functionality and customers are finding it hard to justify the expense for IT Director," said Freund.
He explained that customers are increasingly turning to application service providers (ASPs) and managed service providers, which reduce the need for such products.
"We live in a rapidly changing world and the amount of time IT Director has been around is practically a lifetime in the internet world. We are not disappointed with what has happened; we are actually pleased with its growth in the mid-market space since its launch," explained Freund.
Existing IT Director resellers and partners will be provided with continued support for the next 18 months, after which additional support can be arranged, he said.
Donna Troy, vice president of worldwide channels and alliances at Tivoli, added that the company has worked closely with its partners since the decision was made to scrap the product almost two months ago.
"Tivoli has 1700 partners and only 100 were certified on IT Director. That equates to less than six per cent of our total partners," she explained. "Most of our partners are multi-faceted in terms of storage and security."
"A lot of our investment is in the channel, and will continue to be, because our partners are very important to us," she added. "We will continue to develop ASPs and service providers which will play a significant part in the marketplace and the small to medium sized enterprise space."
First published in Computer Reseller News