IBM Centralizes ERP Workload Management

When IT manages ERP better, the organization achieves a better business outcome

Tivoli Beat - A weekly IBM service management perspective. Orchestrating enterprise-class IT to achieve an optimized business outcome is getting more difficult every year. Increasingly, IT is pressured to reduce costs, increase service levels and proactively address the business risks that can emerge from changing, unpredictable conditions. But given the increasing diversity and complexity of the IT infrastructure, achieving these goals is far from simple.

One example: ERP (enterprise resource planning) workload management. ERP solutions are widely deployed in the enterprise to provide services relating to a vast array of key business functions, such as supply chain management, human resources, customer relations and payroll; calling ERP services "mission-critical" is therefore no exaggeration.

Due to the way these services are implemented and distributed, however, it can be hard to ensure that their workloads are managed as efficiently—and cost-efficiently—as possible. Among other complexities that get in the way: siloed organizational structures, weak enforcement of business priorities, lack of cross-application interaction and information-sharing, and insufficient fault-tolerance, scalability and general flexibility.

When the enterprise can manage workloads across ERP applications in a unified, centralized manner, however, many of these complexities are diminished—and the business outcome is substantially improved.

For instance, imagine being able to dynamically align workloads with changing business requirements, in real time, based on emerging alerts generated by ERP tools. Or consider how costs would fall, if one solution could be used to manage multiple ERP applications—even ERP applications offered by different vendors, such as Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP. Such an approach would allow the enterprise to get best utilization from its installed ERP applications—whatever those applications might be—while also getting a tighter grip on costs, spurring service levels and improving business agility generally.

TWS for Applications simplifies and consolidates ERP workload management

“TWS for Applications fulfills that theory by managing ERP workloads based on business goals—not technical details—thanks to its focus on business-centric policies. When changes occur in the infrastructure, these predefined policies will then automatically take action to improve the odds that business goals are met, no matter how complex or distributed the infrastructure may be.” The next logical question, of course, is how?

IBM delivers the answer: the IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler portfolio of solutions, which are designed to deliver just such best-in-class workload management, even in the case of the most complex infrastructures and the most demanding business environments.

And for ERP application workload management in particular, a key solution is IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler for Applications (TWS for Applications). This tool, updated to version 8.5 in 2009, delivers a compelling package of features and functions specifically created to help the enterprise get the best possible business outcome from ERP applications and the services they support.

It manages this by centralizing the built-in workload features of each ERP solution via a single point of control—essentially becoming the federated dashboard of ERP applications that IT requires for simplest, most effective management. And this applies across different ERP vendors, as well. TWS for Applications can be used to manage ERP applications created by wholly different ERP environments: Oracle e-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, SAP R/3 and SAP Business Warehouse.

Service management theory tells us that an improved outcome will generally come from shifting the focus from technology to business. TWS for Applications fulfills that theory by managing ERP workloads based on business goals—not technical details—thanks to its focus on business-centric policies.

When changes occur in the infrastructure, these predefined policies will then automatically take action to improve the odds that business goals are met, no matter how complex or distributed the infrastructure may be.

Such a design delivers many striking specific benefits. Among others, these include:

A faster, more dynamic response to unpredictable spikes (better scalability)
Easier coordination of workload scheduling, to drive down costs and still meet demand levels
Automated handling of in-house developed treatments using child jobs
Simplified troubleshooting, quicker problem isolation and superior fault tolerance, which collectively yield a more resilient infrastructure that better meets customer expectations
Jobs management directly from within TWS for Applications (as opposed to SAP Solution Manager), yielding improved security because existing security policies will now automatically apply to those jobs
Simpler and faster process for testing and implementing jobs, thanks to the fact that the TWS description language applies to multiple environments (z/OS, ERP, etc.) and is portable, allowing customers to first test jobs and then easily shift them into actual production
Simplified auditing and reporting, to help meet the requirements of pertinent government regulations—and prove they have been met, in the event of an audit.

Furthermore, in TWS for Applications 8.5, many compelling new features have been added to empower organizations who have made the investment in SAP solutions in particular.

SAP events can now define TWS for Applications policies

One such feature, for instance, makes it possible to create even smarter, more effective policies to govern SAP applications by linking TWS for Applications logically with the SAP Solution Manager.

Specifically, when the SAP Computing Center Monitoring System (CCMS) generates an alert—essentially, notifying IT of changing conditions and the importance of a rapid and business-optimized response—TWS for Applications can now generate that response.

How does this work? Consider that TWS for Application policies are based on event rules. And CCMS alerts are now recognized as TWS events. This means TWS for Applications administrators can create policies that are directly triggered by CCMS alerts. These policies, in turn, will yield a faster, more consistent and less expensive response to unpredictable conditions that might affect SAP applications and services.

Job throttling scales back runaway jobs

Ensuring an SAP system delivers best business value also means ensuring that it is never overloaded by specific tasks that demand too many resources (processing time, memory, storage, or others). Instead, IT must be able to match the business priority of workloads with the resources they require.

Fortunately, TWS for Applications now includes job throttling functionality for SAP jobs. If jobs are consuming too many resources, and overall business performance or stability is threatened, TWS for Applications can intercept and release those jobs from the queue, thus reducing or eliminating the threat that they will inappropriately dominate the system.

This function—available for both distributed and end-to-end solutions—is also rendered more intelligent by parent-child job characterization functionality, which establishes the logical relationships between jobs. And TWS for Applications can also be configured to report on its activity to CCMS, thus closing the monitoring loop between Tivoli and SAP.

Automatic Solution Manager certification links SAP and TWS

For SAP to work optimally with third-party solutions, such as TWS for Applications, those solutions must be registered in the SAP System Landscape Directory. This is a time-consuming process if administered manually.

A better approach is now made possible by TWS for Applications via an automated installation option. Essentially, TWS for Applications can now directly register itself in the SAP Directory, generating an accelerated time-to-value and freeing IT team members to attend to other, more complex tasks of higher business priority.

Installation enhancements get TWS up and running—fast

TWS for Applications 8.5 also includes new installation features which are helpful whether or not organizations are SAP customers.

For example, the solution can now read and update the new Tivoli Workload Automation registry file, helping to coordinate it with other Tivoli offerings for superior overall integration and workflow between tools. Its interface, too, has been revamped and is now consistent with the interface used in other Tivoli Workload Scheduler products, such as Tivoli Workload Scheduler 8.5 and Tivoli Dynamic Workload Console 8.5. And similar cross-tool consistency is evident in the fact that TWS for Applications 8.5 now uses the same launchpad as other TWS offerings.

Rounding out the new features: the customized files bundled with Tivoli Workload Scheduler for Applications now include an XA Workstation definition, which simplifies deployment and configuration in relevant cases.

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