While content providers, distributors, and advertisers adjust their focus to include the Internet, video-on-demand, and wireless devices, startups such as Magnum Technologies that provide systems management products are rapidly moving into the mainstream.

The six-year-old startup, which has survived the telecommunications downturn, finds itself in the middle of a rapidly growing market that now exceeds $1 billion, according to IDC. The market includes major players such as IBM, which acquired one of Magnum’s competitors, Collation, late last year.

Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based Magnum provides IT management products that allow companies to not just discover all the applications running on their networks, but to see the relationships among the various applications.

It also finds the crucial intersections among software services that relate to each other. The company’s business service management product line, Advantage, allows IT departments to monitor and quickly assess the reasons for network slowdowns before they become very costly outages.

It gives corporations a dashboard-style view of their systems. Corporations can assess the potential impact of new applications before the applications are actually installed. They can also drill down to the point where they can see the impact the applications will have on individual departments.

Unlike some of its rivals, the company offers an array of features that address various aspects of IT management. It also offers the attendant services.

The company, which started as a systems integrator, built its own products over the last few years. With its services background, it has been able to secure a number of significant customer wins.

“With us, it’s not a long install,” Magnum CEO Greg Crow told RedHerring.com on Monday. “It is one product with a lot of features. We do not piecemeal things together in an effort to make them work. Companies such as Collation offer niche products.”

Seeing Starz

Perhaps its highest profile recent customer win was the Starz Entertainment Group, a premium movie service provider. In January, Starz became one of the first movie distribution firms to create a service that allowed consumers to download movies to PCs (see Starz Debuts Portable Video).

The service, called Vongo, makes the movies available at about the same time they are being aired on TV.

“Vongo took us down a road we had never been down before—delivering movie content over IP,” said Tom Grove, network manager at Starz. “Vongo is pretty complex.”

Starz found itself in the market for complex monitoring technology. The company hired a consulting firm to assist with the problem. The consulting group came up with a solution based on its own products that did not work to Starz’s complete satisfaction

Englewood, Colorado-based Starz finally settled on Magnum.

“From our Magnum dashboard, we can monitor all the various components that make Vongo run,” said Mr. Grove. “It was a solution to a very complex problem.”