The Bronze Award in the Systems Management category goes to HP OpenView Operations for Windows 7.5 Limited Edition. The product is an event management and performance monitoring solution that rivals Microsoft's MOM and NetIQ's AppManager. It allows smaller customers or enterprise departments to manage their systems and applications and provides centralized event, performance monitoring and reporting for up to 30 servers.

Hewlett-Packard designed OpenView for Windows 7.5 Limited Edition (OVOW) for a single management server environment. It provides event and performance management from Windows as well as out-of-the-box management capabilities for essential Microsoft Windows and Oracle applications.

Its new features include a centralized point of control for the network, servers, operating systems, applications and services for correlating and managing all the IT infrastructure components of a business service. The solution also contains OpenView Smart Plug-ins for Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory, Microsoft Virtual Server, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle.

Our judges were impressed by the level of innovation, functionality and the company's support and service for this product. However, some judges felt that the product could be improved in the areas of performance and ease of use.

Pricing: HP OpenView Operations for Windows 7.5 Limited Edition has a list price of $17,995 for a 20-server limit and $23,990 for a 30-server limit.

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