CISCO Systems has launched a new set of Windows-based network management tools as part of the company's drive into the lower end of the networking market.
Part of its latest suite of tools is a new version of the CiscoWorks network management software which allows administrators to send diagnostic information about their network automatically to Cisco customer support staff via the Internet.
This new feature, called CiscoConnect, provides a direct link to the newly created Cisco Information On-line (CIO), a Mosaic-based help-site that resides on the global Internet.
'If there is a problem with your network, (the new software) will tell you where that problem exists,' said Cisco's managing director of Asian operations, William Messer. 'In the past that has been a product requiring a UNIX station, but now we have moved down to the lower end of the market, to Windows-based PCs,' he said.
Mr Messer said the new products were recognition that in Cisco's key growth markets of remote access and IBM inter-networking, users in the region have traditionally preferred the PC platform and operating system.
The CiscoWorks for Windows products are a subset of the company's original UNIX-based CiscoWorks, and runs on the HP OpenView for Windows network management platform. Both the UNIX and Windows versions of the product are based on the SNMP protocol (simple network management protocol), which means they can both be used together on the same network.