Opsware Wants To Stop Anybody From Causing BottlenecksOpsware Wants To Stop Anybody From Causing Bottlenecks

Human error is by far the primary reason for system bottlenecks and breakdowns. Opsware Inc. on Tuesday unveiled Automated Configuration Tracking, a product that could eliminate a lot of those errors and mitigate a lot of infrastructure damage.

Opsware already sells Data Center Automation, software that replaces many manual processes in the data center. The Automated Configuration Tracking software should become a barking watchdog. As part of Opsware System 3.6, priced from $50,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on configuration, it will monitor any ad hoc changes and either verify that a change is valid or recommend that it be rejected.

Meta Group analyst Corey Ferengul says Opsware will let people monitor the whole configuration, finding out what's missing or what's out of sync. "The software will say when the configuration is out of scope," he says, "no matter who made the change."