Reporting
An attractive benefit of a central repository for all of your event and performance data is the ability to create insightful reports. Access 2000 provides MOM's reporting capabilities. MOM includes a runtime version of Access 2000, but to customize existing reports or create new reports, you'll need a full version of Access 2000 (or later).
I opened MOM Reporting from the Start menu, and MOM presented me with an Access program that displayed a selection of available reports. This intuitive program let me create some useful reports in minutes, view them, then publish them to the Web Console with a few mouse clicks. Figure 3 shows a Web Console Reports window that displays one of the reports that I published.
MOM Reporting also features a command-line interface to facilitate batch reporting. You can use Win2K's Task Scheduler to schedule reports to run at off-peak times and deliver the reports you need when you need them. You can publish reports to the MOM Administrator Console, or you can publish HTML-format reports directly to the Web Console or another location that you use a Web browser to access.
Base Your Decision on Your Needs
MOM's relatively simple implementation and easy-to-use interface belie the product's powerful capabilities and scalability. The MOM feature that most impressed me was the amount of knowledge jammed into the Management Pack. Also, Microsoft promises add-on Management Packs for BackOffice and .NET Enterprise Server management. The ability to focus MOM on the information that's important to you and tune out the rest also has tremendous value to overburdened administrators.
MOM is very forward-looking—in fact, the included Management Pack isn't much help if you're managing a Windows NT 4.0 environment. If you work for a smaller organization or if you aren't concerned about proactive systems management and monitoring, MOM might not benefit you. MOM requires a certain investment in time and money, and a continued commitment is necessary to keep MOM in tune with your environment. If you can't dedicate the necessary resources, you probably won't see a significant return on your investment.