Does Opsware's recent purchase of storage management vendor CreekPath Systems make it the biggest, baddest data-center automation dog around? Maybe.

Opsware CEO Ben Horowitz told Network Computing sister pub Byte and Switch that his company will not sell or support CreekPath's Acuity storage management software, but will instead package the Acuity SRM technology with its eponymous Automation Suite. Any triple threat--storage, server and network configuration all from one management company--sounds good to us.

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Thing is, though, even tight asset management like this must integrate with existing IT change processes and products. The first question IT has when something breaks is, "What changed?" ... and that information comes from the change management process.

When we see Opsware touching all these bases through integration, we'll know this purchase will fetch kudos in the enterprise. --Bruce Boardman, bboardman@nwc.com