 Getting the best business value from IT service management is no trivial task. Often, it requires deep knowledge of not just the solutions themselves, but of the ways they can be optimized and integrated to deliver new functionality required for a given situation.
Consider, for instance, a provisioning tool which is designed to install new software on any given node on the network. Its business value will be significantly enhanced if it can be integrated with monitoring tools designed to detect when new software is needed on a given system, or archiving tools designed to migrate data from servers to permanent storage. Innovative integrations which combine or extend features in this way are continually created by systems managers, in situations where from-the-factory integration is insufficient for the business requirements. Unfortunately, their business value is limited to that environment because they typically aren’t published for the benefit of the outside world.
IBM’s Open Process Automation Library (OPAL) Is the Leading Source of IBM Tivoli Integration Information
Clearly, then, a formal yet Web-based public library of such integrations would be of tremendous value to enterprises seeking to deploy cohesive solutions to meet their business needs. Fortunately for them, IBM Tivoli has created just such a library: OPAL. Over the last three years, OPAL has evolved from its original definition as a catalog of integrations for IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager into a far more comprehensive archive of many types of solution integration modules, spanning many members of the IBM Tivoli service management family, as well as many third-party products commonly used in enterprise-class IT divisions worldwide. As a result, IT professionals have increasingly come to rely on OPAL, leveraging its technical tips, adapters, probes, agents, automation packages, and other forms of key information to obtain more business value from their solution portfolios than ever before.
Where does this information--collectively referred to as integration modules--come from? Two sources: IBM Tivoli development and independent software vendors (ISVs). Over nine hundred modules are available over the Web via the public OPAL catalog. Every ISV integrated solution listed in OPAL meets the IBM technical validation specifications and has received the Ready for IBM Tivoli software validation mark.
All modules in OPAL deliver tremendous business value by allowing IBM Tivoli customers to get enhanced functionality and features from their products?both IBM and non-IBM products?in real-world scenarios where every opportunity to optimize counts. Furthermore, for the ISVs, there is an additional incentive to supply integration modules, since published content on the OPAL site serves to promote their products at the same time it solves technical challenges for their customers.
OPAL Addresses Many Technical Tools and Business Contexts
IBM Tivoli clients may wonder: Specifically, which solutions are available? The answer is an exceptionally wide variety, spanning many classes of tools and business contexts. In the area of storage and security, for instance, there are currently well over a hundred integration modules, such as adaptors, connectors, parsers, agents, and technical integration papers; customers with solutions such as IBM Tivoli Identity Manager and the IBM Storage Manager family will find that they can now combine authentication and storage/archiving solutions in many powerful new ways.
Similar integration modules address the IBM Tivoli Maximo family. This portfolio of applications delivers best-in-class enterprise asset management, delivering inventory and status information for all assets, whether they fall inside the traditional IP infrastructure or not, even including assets such as pumps, generators, and other resources unaddressed by competitive offerings. The OPAL catalog contains 37 integration modules specifically designed to enhance Maximo as an enterprise asset management solution.
In the area of its original strength, software provisioning and orchestration, OPAL offers an exceptionally diverse, rich array of modules. The IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager family, IBM Tivoli Configuration Manager, IBM Tivoli System Automation, IBM Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database, and other products are the beneficiaries of over 274 different modules, such as automation policies, discovery library adaptors, and software package definitions.
But the OPAL catalog doesn’t end there; there are literally hundreds of other integration modules in wholly different areas of IT service management. These include availability and business service (IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager and IBM Tivoli Monitoring, for instance) and status monitoring, such as that provided by IBM Tivoli Netcool, a portfolio of products that empowers IT to track service status levels and performance using real-time, color-coded dashboards.
Here, OPAL may deliver special rewards, since monitoring the status of an entire, complex IT infrastructure will typically involve tracking products from a broad spectrum of vendors, and OPAL can help connect those products with the Netcool family. Clients using IBM Netcool OMNIbus and Juniper Networks' enterprise-class network hardware and software, for example, will discover integration modules targeted at that combination.
Exciting New Features Enhance the OPAL Experience
Of course, providing a powerful library of integration modules is only half the OPAL story; the other half is the means by which end users and system integrators can access those modules, isolating the information and solutions they need as quickly and easily as possible. Here, IBM has made significant strides in recent months by revamping and enhancing the OPAL Web interface based on user feedback and requests.
For instance, the site now boasts improved navigation and search to simplify the experience of browsing the site and accelerate the process of finding exactly the information required by a given business need. Additionally, because yesterday’s searches and solutions are often directly relevant to present searches, the site allows the storage of Favorite modules and Recently Accessed information.
OPAL content can also now be sorted in new ways. These include by integration module popularity, recent updates, original date of inclusion, and user rating levels, all of which would certainly be helpful to an IT professional interested in coming up to speed on the latest changes for particular business functions, solutions, or classes of solutions. RSS (RDF Site Summary) is also supported to make it as easy as possible for users to be notified when new content appears; RSS software on the customer's side will reflect that new content as it comes online, without that customer having to perform a search or visit the site per se.
In the event a site visit does happen and a search is performed, that search can now be refined to fall within a logical subset, such as another category of information, so that by successive approximations the user can get closer and closer to the ideal integration module required to address a given problem or challenge. Successful searches can now be copied and sent to another user, and budget-challenged IT divisions will find that searches can also now be restricted to free or fee-based modules.
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