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 Software provisioning has emerged as a key element of enterprise-class IT operations—and IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager has emerged as a best-in-class provisioning solution driving IT business value.
In part, this development stems from attempts to apply service management ideals to IT. Enterprise-class IT operations have typically evolved in a relatively ad hoc manner, sometimes resulting in isolated service domains and siloed operations. Superior results generally come from a service-oriented architecture (SOA), in which underlying services are abstracted out and can then be both optimized and reutilized as many times as necessary, in as many business contexts as are required.
One example of such an underlying service is software provisioning. Best-in-class provisioning tools can help by delivering a key underlying service to support all other IT services. Since database hosting and composite applications are dependent on deployed systems, those systems must have appropriate support software—an operating system, middleware, data, drivers, and other files—designed to drive those services as efficiently and securely as possible.
 By deploying an optimized, automated provisioning solution, organizations can fulfill IT service initiatives, reduce operational overhead, minimize inconsistency across systems, achieve compliance goals, and in short minimize the business risks and maximize the business value for each service.
IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager (TPM) comprises just such a best-in-class solution. TPM provides a single integrated solution for inventory, OS provisioning, software distribution and patch management capabilities. Even bare-metal installations are possible; given a server with a blank hard drive, that server can be fully provisioned simply by connecting it to the network and turning it on. Once a disk image has been installed, the server can be tailored with specific data files, applications stacks, or drivers to fulfill a particular IT function.
And because the solution is also scriptable, all of this can happen automatically—accelerating deployment time, minimizing costs, and freeing key IT staff for other, more complex tasks better paired to their knowledge levels. Such automation, a key element of SOA design goals, is enhanced with new features available in the latest version of TPM, 5.1.1, such as Web Replay, which allows administrators to record any series of text inputs or mouse clicks and then play it back on demand.
TPM Delivers Key Benefits to Almost Any Organization
Many organizations will find that deploying TPM enhances overall IT efficiency through the improvement of software provisioning required to fulfill IT initiatives.
Take, for example, one client who approached Portal Partnership, a UK-based IBM Premier Business partner, about developing and deploying a new software provisioning strategy. An insurance provider with a staff of under a thousand, this company had a complex IT operation spanning both traditional operations and development. Provisioning software to all of their servers, numbering well over a hundred, in an optimized fashion that took both operations and development into account – was no simple task.
Settling on IBM as a provisioning solution vendor was, however, relatively straightforward for the client, in part because of an earlier project involving Portal Partnership; IBM solutions had played a key role in enhancing performance through automation. Working with Portal Partnership, the client had previously utilized IBM Tivoli Configuration Manager (TCM) to distribute software to desktops at 17 different locations, as well as IBM Tivoli Monitoring to achieve real-time visibility of the health of different IT services and the resources required to support them, such as allocated storage and CPU utilization levels.
As its business needs grew, however, the client found that a more complex and comprehensive software provisioning solution was required. Driving this situation was, in part, a central business issue familiar to many organizations today: compliance. Specifically, they needed to achieve compliance with governmental regulations specifying how corporations are to secure and monitor sensitive data, a particularly compelling concern in the case of an insurance company. Like many businesses, the client was aware of the possibility of an audit, and sought—through software provisioning—not only to fulfill compliance initiatives but also to make it easy to demonstrate to an auditor that they had been fulfilled.
Toward that end, Portal Partnership was hired to help answer the question of how best to translate these business goals into a technological implementation. Following an initial assessment, Portal Partnership determined that the client would need a new provisioning strategy in order to:
- Capture and install operating system images;
- Manage the Windows patch management process;
- Install and configure corporate applications;
- Gather inventory data;
- Manage patches; and
- Perform bare-metal software restoration on demand.
Facilitating Compliance Initiatives through Accelerated, Automated Provisioning
TPM proved to be the key solution in meeting the client’s needs. While TCM had been primarily used to manage provisioning in end-user desktops, TPM delivered similar benefits on the server side. Through consistent, automated server image provisioning, the possibility of inadvertent errors through manual installation was minimized. And through integrated patch distribution, TPM also helped secure both the servers and their IT services—seamlessly and holistically, to every service and every server on the network.
The outcome from a compliance standpoint, then, was to ensure that diverse systems all had the most up-to-date software, and in this way fulfill compliance initiatives by securing core data and IT services more effectively than ever before. Furthermore, TPM helped demonstrate that compliance by generating a clear audit trail.
Additional business benefits emerged from the substantial reduction in costs. TPM now handled complex provisioning tasks that would otherwise have required personal attention from a member of the IT staff. What’s more, Portal Partnership helped the client enhance the efficiency of their IT application and service deployment.
Because TPM integrates directly with IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM Rational ClearCase for application development, both of which the client utilizes, the TPM value proposition extended into in-house software development as well. Now, as new applications arrive from the development group, TPM is used to automatically deploy them to appropriate systems on the operational side, spurring time-to-value.
With such a comprehensive list of business benefits, one might wonder how much time was required to integrate the solution. The answer is: surprisingly little. Portal Partnership managed to develop, deploy, integrate, and test the new provisioning strategy, achieving all target goals from both business and technological standpoints, in only 45 days.
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