Users told to hang fire until LCF release

Analysts are advising users not to start deploying Tivoli's agent-based systems management software - the Lightweight Client Framework (LCF) - until LCF-compliant applications are released.

IBM's Tivoli unit released the first version of LCF as part of version 3.2 of the Tivoli Management Framework (TMF) in September 1997, but will not ship LCF-based applications until later this year with the release of version 11 of the Tivoli Management Environment (TME).

Tom Scholtz, program director for the Meta Group's systems management unit, warned: 'To exploit LWF, you need applications. If users have resources it does no harm to plan for it, otherwise they should wait until the applications are available. They could play with 3.2 of the Framework to see the benefits, but they'll need to change the topology of the systems management environment.'

He added that, from the release of TME 11 onwards, Tivoli intended to synchronise the delivery of all new TME applications twice a year. The move follows customer criticism of constantly having to upgrade different packages.

But Tom Bishop, Tivoli vice president of architecture, replied: 'We released the first version of LCF in 3.2 last September, and a version of our Distributed Monitoring product that uses it to monitor Netware systems at the same time. When we come out with the next version of TME, the core applications will support the LCF architecture. We would not expect users to upgrade before then.'