Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition--Halcyon Enters U.S. Market for Systems Management Tools

Halcyon Software, a British developer of systems management software for OS/400 and Windows NT, is coming to America. The company has an established business serving OS/400 shops in the United Kingdom and Europe, and is now expanding into the much larger U.S. market, which the company hopes is receptive to its low-cost software. Halcyon has started laying the foundation for a long-term, permanent presence by forming reseller partnerships and investing in technical support personnel on U.S. soil.

Halcyon develops a wide array of systems automation software for OS/400. The company's offerings run the gamut, including system-event and message management, user and screen monitors, job schedulers, spool file managers, and performance tools. The software for Windows is somewhat less extensive.

Halcyon also packages its software in a unique way. The company has three main product groups--Message Manager, System Event Manager, and Performance Manager--which, in turn, are made up of an array of individual monitors, such as TCP/IP Monitor, Job Queue Monitor, Performance Monitor, Device Monitor, and Screen Monitor, among others. In addition to these three main product groups, Halcyon offers six utilities, including Job Scheduler, Disk Space Manager, Spool File Manager, and Message Communicator, which do not contain monitors as subcomponents.

Halcyon combines these three main product groups and the six additional utilities into four major packaged suites, including Monitor Suite, Systems Operations Suite, High Availability Suite, and Operations Center (which was just released). These suites contain different combinations of the product groups and utilities. The entry-level Monitor Suite has a fewest number of monitors. The Operation Center is at the top of the food chain with the full array of Halcyon products. This might seem a little confusing at first glance, but Halcyon has a good product suite chart (in PDF format), which lays out everything in an understandable way. While the company will sell individual monitors, buying them grouped together gets the customers more software for their money, the company says.

Halcyon has formed a reseller partnership with Read Technologies, an Irvine, California, company. Read Technologies provides consulting services and is a reseller for several other OS/400 software vendors, including the security outfits PowerTech Group and SkyView Partners. Read Technologies is also a copartner in SkyView Partners, which was considering becoming Halcyon's U.S. reseller in 2002 but decided to focus on security software and services instead.

Halcyon is serious about entering the U.S. market, says Carole Chandler, Halcyon's marketing communications manager back in Peterborough, England. "We view the American market as a massive market compared to Europe," she says. "We want to do it at the right pace, in an authoritative way. We want to make sure, when we launch in the U.S., we have the key resources on the ground, and that includes support."

Halcyon is finalizing a contract to have a knowledgeable, two-year veteran of Halcyon's systems tools on call to provide technical support. That person will be stationed in the United States and will provide support for the company's future American customers, as well as resellers, Chandler says. "We've made the move to invest in that area," she says.

In terms of Halcyon's competitive outlook, Chandler says it is quite good, considering that the vendor was already being considered by some American companies even though it had no technical support in North America. "I believe our pricing gives the user more software for the money and the ability to handle more service for their environment, with a minimum of resources," Chandler says. "I say watch this space. We're going to have direct impact on those companies."

One of the biggest changes that Halcyon has made recently is the introduction of its fourth product suite, the Operations Center. This is the big daddy in the Halcyon product line up, containing every Halcyon product. If customers buy the Operations Center, they will be getting a Job Scheduler and a Spool File Manager--two products not available in any other product suite from Halcyon.

Halcyon also introduced a new monitor, called the User Profile Monitor. The function of this program is to provide automatic monitoring of user profiles that have been disabled or whose temporary storage exceeds a predefined threshold. The User Profile Monitor is part of the System Event Manager product group, and it is available in the three most-advanced product suites: Systems Operations Suite, High Availability Suite, and Operations Center.

Enhancements have also been made to Enterprise Console, a Windows-based console that lets users view all messages and alerts generated by any of the Halcyon products. This product, which is sold with every suite except Halcyon's entry-level Monitor Suite, has been enhanced to include new filters and actions, and to be able to accept messages from other platforms or equipment, such as environmental monitors, the company says.

Halcyon has also developed a new version of Disk Space Manager, one of the features available with the two most-advanced product suites, High Availability Suite and Operations Center. Halcyon says it has completely rewritten Disk Space Manager for Version 3.0 to take advantage of the latest IBM APIs, which reduce the time it takes to build the disk information. Disk Space Manager 3.0 offers full OS/400 IFS information and lets users build their own logical views of the data and tailor their own reports, the company says.

This article has been corrected since it was first published. Carole Chandler's name was incorrectly spelled. Guild Companies regrets the error. [Correction made 11/11/03.]