Start-ups aim to tame IT management complexity

10 IT management technology start-ups to watch

"Technologies like virtualization and cloud computing are driving the demand for advanced automation and service-level management capabilities because environments using both internal and external computing change the way management software must work," says Andi Mann, research director at Enterprise Management Associates. "Management software needs to be aware of its environment and now it must be able to adapt to manage applications and services in these hybrid on-premise/cloud computing environments."

A flurry of fresh-faced companies has emerged to both ease familiar pain points and address newfound challenges. Several upstarts say they can do it by using the very technologies that are driving the complexity in today's heterogeneous networks: software-as-a-service (SaaS), cloud computing and virtualization.

Slideshow: 10 technologies from 2009's IT management's start-ups to watch

"There has definitely been a change in delivery models. Now management software is available via quite a wide spectrum," says David Williams, research vice president at Gartner. "Because management requires on-premise data, many service offerings still require a probe or bit of software on the customer site, but the heavy lifting of the management technology can be done by the vendor."