It was a tight race in a field crowded with competitors, but HP OpenView Smart Plug-in for Microsoft Active Directory has taken the Active Directory Management Tool crown. Last year's winner, Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2000, was a no-show, and--testament to the closeness of the voting--three vendors vied for the two runner-up slots: ScriptLogic, BindView, and NetIQ.

HP's Smart Plug-Ins (SPIs) are integrated, out-of-the-box solutions that work seamlessly with HP OpenView products, adding service-specific management capabilities. The company's Active Directory (AD) SPI monitors operational activities (e.g., services, performance counters, event logs, Windows Management Instrumentation--WMI) of key AD resources, and it helps Windows IT personnel maintain proactive control, synchronization, and integrity of enterprise directory resources. It provides superior breadth in monitoring, usability, visualization, and scalability. Leveraging key attributes of HP OpenView Operations for Windows, the AD SPI ensures that key resources--such as the Global Catalog (GC), DNS, Directory Information Tree (DIT), domain controllers (DCs), Operation Masters, and key AD services--are functioning, synchronized, and healthy.