Centerfield Sells disk/HUNTER to S4i Systems
April 15, 2008 Alex Woodie
Centerfield Technology sold its disk/HUNTER product to its partner, S4i Systems, the companies announced last week. S4i says disk/HUNTER’s capability to detect spikes in i, i5/OS, and AS/400 servers in real time will mesh well with its DASD-Plus product, which provides a longer-term view of disk use, as well as reclaiming lost disk space and forecasting future disk needs. S4i Systems, which is based in Oceanside, California, has been selling Centerfield’s disk/HUNTER software for years. Disk/HUNTER produces reports that help systems administrators find out which jobs are consuming disk, what objects are associated with those jobs, and who created the jobs, among other capabilities. In the same vein, Centerfield, of Rochester, Minnesota, has been a solid reseller of S4i Systems’ DASD-Plus, which provides dozens of routines that automate standard i-based Power Systems (formerly System i, i5, iSeries, and AS/400) housekeeping tasks, such as clearing history logs, compressing data, resizing libraries, and reorganizing databases. In fact, the synergy between the two complementary products is so great that last fall the companies unveiled a deal that gave customers 40 percent off when they purchased disk/HUNTER and DASD-Plus together. By December, the plan emerged for S4i Systems to purchase the rights to sell and develop disk/HUNTER. S4i Systems is also taking over technical support for the software. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. S4i Systems plans to package disk/HUNTER as an extension of S4i DASD-Plus, says Spencer Eliot, president and CTO of S4i Systems. “This new module will be relabeled and marketed as DASD-Plus Alert,” he says. The sale of disk/HUNTER puts Centerfield Technology in a better position to execute its own business plan which calls for increased alignment with SQL and DB2 based tools. According to Mark Holm, CTO at Centerfield Technology, says the sale benefits all parties. “We believe this is a positive development for our loyal disk/HUNTER customers because the product will be in the hands of disk-space experts and they will benefit from that expertise,” he says. “This is also a positive development for Centerfield because it allows us to sharpen our strategic focus on SQL and DB2 tools that improve performance and automate administration.” RELATED STORIES Centerfield, S4i Offer Deal on System i Performance Tools
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