Comments on: HP Layoffs: GroundWork Open Source Smells Blood

By: Mitchell R

Mitchell R — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:21:54 +0000

I found the following comment on computerworld… Maybe Nimsoft isn’t the next big thing after all…:

I am a Nimsoft customer and have been informed by my account manager of serious cuts at Nimsoft. This surprised me very much as their CEO and VP EMEA confirmed to me in an executive meeting that the company was cashflow positive made significant benefit and is the fastest growing company in their space…

I work for a leading UK bank that recently replaced HP OV by Nimsoft, however as you understand I prefer to stay anonymous.

Nimsoft today anounced to more than 50% of their UK based employees that they have been made redundant. Employees were sent home Friday afternoon, after Tim Bisley, VP of EMEA informed them that their services were not longer required. Employees will be called back for a 1 to 1 discussion in the next couple of weeks.

These redundancies follow a string of previous redundancies over the past few months. Previously the Nimsoft Marketing and Communication department in EMEA were made redundant and the southern European operation were closed.

It is expected that the German operation will be closed as well but due to employment legislation this final action will take longer to implement. Further it is expected that the UK field sales team will be further reduced from 4 to 2 Sales executives. The support and pre-sales department are also affected with a number of redundancies.

A BMC executive in the UK confirmed to me that they are considering acquiring Nimsoft in the near future. The Nimsoft executives did not deny nor confirm.

By: Surprised?

Surprised? — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:56:40 +0000

Or, if you would prefer something more reasonable, but supported, you should look at PacketTrap – http://www.PacketTrap.com. Not based on open source, but 80% of the functionality at 10% of the cost. They have a new product on the market called Perspective. We are pushing it as a strong alternative.

Patrick the PacketTrap Pusher.

By: keith

keith — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:47:04 +0000

On a purely technical note, if you want a Nagios derivative take a look at Opsview (http://www.opsview.org/). I reckon its got a much better overall interface when compared to Groundwork plus some nifty features for hierarchical installations.

By: Bugz

Bugz — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:35:05 +0000

Only half of the layoffs were from HP, with the other half from EDS which was acquired in their bid to become like IBM in managing IT resources for clients. I think many of the layoffs will come from duplication between the companies. And as most companies do with layoffs, they keep their best people and utilize it as an opportunity to get rid of weak employees. Of course you can never factor out the stupidity of management that are oblivious to the actual work being done under them, along with their harebrained schemes to cut costs,