Tool consolidation
Enterprises will prioritize management tool consolidation over new acquisitions. Enterprise customers will want to invest in new tools only if they absolutely have to. In that sense, enterprises will want to look for solutions that can address several of their needs so that they do not have to acquire multiple tools and look at integration between them. The ability to cover multiple areas of management (performance, configuration, availability, etc.), to support multiple technologies (e.g., application tiers), and to operate across multiple platforms (UNIX, Windows, virtual), will be important criteria that enterprises will use to assess what management tools will work for them. When procuring new tools, customers will also focus on how these tools can be integrated into their current systems and processes.