Conversation with Richard Muirhead of Tideway Systems

Richard Muirwood, CEO of Tideway Systems, and I had our semi-annual chat the other day. Tideway's Tideway Foundation™is a management tool making it possible for organizations to get a clear understanding of the underlying physical and virtual infrastructure supporting their business applications. They call what they do "dependency mapping."

Our conversation ranged pretty far and wide since it had been close to six months since our last meeting. We discussed how many different approaches to management and security in virtual environments had emerged in the last six months. We both agreed that Each of these tools could be very useful to the right people at the right time.

Richard's company would point out that it is nearly impossible to deal with dynamic virtualized environments with the tools that many are using, i.e., keeping sticky notes on a monitor or keeping a spreadsheet showing dependencies. Something that is much more automated and can move at the speed of change in an organization's environment is really required now. The larger the datacenter, the greater the need for automation.

If your IT infrastructure fits that description, you may find it useful to visit the demo page on Tideway's website.

I will be riding over to Orlando to attend part of  Symantec's ManageFusion 2008 today. I'll post from the event.