IBM Tivoli Subscriptions: Get the Latest, Greatest Workload Management Capabilities

Keep the infrastructure current and you maximize IT ROI

Tivoli Beat - A weekly IBM service management perspective. If you've made the investment in IBM Tivoli solutions in your IT infrastructure already, why not maximize the return those solutions generate?

Doing that, of course, will mean keeping your infrastructure current. And that, in turn, is no easy feat. Just as the technology field in general is in a constant state of change, so, too, is an enterprise's IT infrastructure, both in terms of the business strategies it supports and the services it delivers.

As new threats such as security challenges emerge, you'll need to address them as quickly and comprehensively as possible. As new integration possibilities appear, you'll have to decide how best to implement them to get the cross-domain, cross-solution power they create.

And, of course, along the way you'll have to try to simplify management and reduce costs as well—despite acquiring these new solutions, each of which in theory increases overall complexity and involves an initial investment. That is, to say the least, a difficult package of goals to fulfill.

Fortunately, IBM offers a relatively simple, straightforward way to achieve them: IBM Software Subscription and Support .

Once Tivoli software subscriptions are bought, any new developments to those solutions released over the course of the entire next year will be completely free. And the phrase "any new developments" means just that: from entirely new rollouts to feature/security updates to fix packs in general.

That means your cost projections and budgeting for those solutions become predictable down to the penny. It also means your infrastructure is continually current, and you get as much business value from your Tivoli investment as possible—fast.

How fast? Typically, the same business day updates are released. Given a subscription , you can set eNotifications to alert you as soon as an update appears, then download it directly over the Internet and deploy it as soon as you like.

And because IBM Tivoli is committed to a constant optimization in all its offerings—incremental change, often directly suggested by customer needs or interests—you can be sure that a subscription will imply more than just theoretical value. In addition to frequent feature packs, entirely new solution iterations typically emerge every 12 to 18 months.

Furthermore, all IBM Tivoli solutions come backed by the deep expertise of more than 60 development labs, and 24x7x365 support available any time you need it to address emerging issues.

Add it up and the value proposition is very clear: the latest software, delivering the most business value, obtained in the fastest way, at the lowest cost.

That's a bargain from almost any business perspective.

Recent updates to IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler make the case for a Tivoli subscription

Once Tivoli software subscriptions are bought, any new developments to those solutions released over the course of the entire next year will be completely free. And the phrase "any new developments" means just that: from entirely new rollouts to feature/security updates to fix packs in general. Curious for a specific example of how IBM Tivoli software subscriptions have empowered IBM clients around the world?

Consider the case of IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler (TWS)—a cross-infrastructural solution for workload management that can optimize the way those workloads are carried out, even in the most complex architectures, by automatically addressing many common problems.

TWS offers a centralized console for simplified oversight of workload execution. That means no matter how many different systems are involved in a given workload, even if it spans both distributed systems and a mainframe, administrators can track how well that workload is running (or how poorly, as the case may be). Common issues will automatically be brought to the administrators’ attention via real-time alerts that specify the nature of the issue, and larger trends can be tracked via the configurable reports the solution can generate.

And, of course, TWS can also directly solve many types of problems without requiring administrator effort at all. This happens via a policy-driven engine that can address typical situations such as a system failure by starting/stopping jobs, routing them through failover systems if necessary, and thus making sure that key IT services are maintained and key tasks are carried out.

That translates into a self-healing infrastructure that not only detects problems, but also solves those problems with remarkable speed and consistency.

In the latest version, Tivoli Workload Scheduler 8.6, these capabilities are expanded and optimized to yield even more value— and for IBM customers with a TWS subscription , that value was available free of charge the same day version 8.6 hit the streets.

Flexible management, better visualization, simplified SLA adherence, new cloud integration

Among other new functions:

Superior consolidation of mainframe/distributed workloads. Via Tivoli Workload Scheduler, organizations with an IBM System z mainframe have already been able to utilize it as a single point of command—orchestrating workloads even when those workloads operate partly or completely on a distributed infrastructure instead of the System z exclusively.

Now, in version 8.6, TWS empowers such organizations to pursue the reverse of this management paradigm at will. That is, TWS can be used from a distributed server to manage workloads operating on a System z. This flexibility means that managers can choose whichever of the two approaches will work best for them, tailoring their workload management to their needs and infrastructures, and thus getting a custom fit.

Streamlined business process mapping. Complex workload oversight is, to a significant extent, a problem of visualization; when workloads run on multiple systems and operating systems, perhaps many of them, it's harder to understand the overall chain of execution and harder to isolate or resolve problems when they come up.

TWS version 8.6 helps to address this challenge by rendering specialized job types more clearly and intuitively—giving managers an effortless, bird's eye view of workloads, even in the most complex cases. Direct use of dynamic workload automation then helps them translate understanding into action, keeping crucial workloads up and running.

Workload timeline simulation. Organizations chartered with executing workloads within a specific period of time, perhaps to fulfill the terms of a service level agreement (SLA), will find this an invaluable feature. Because the duration of total workload execution can be accurately estimated in advance, managers can make sure that SLAs will be fulfilled—even when the unexpected happens, and workloads must run via failover systems (which might normally create an unwanted delay).
Improved cloud management. As cloud architectures are deployed more and more, the question of workload management inside those clouds becomes more and more important.

And because clouds are typically managed by software in a deeply automated way for highest efficiency and lowest costs, workload management solutions must be interoperable with that software—at every stage of the service lifecycle.

For that reason, TWS 8.6 now boasts simplified integration with IBM Tivoli Service Automation Manager (TSAM)—IBM's management solution for cradle-to-grave orchestration of complex IT services in a cloud.

Via the new integration, organizations can build clouds, deploy complex workloads in them, and use TWS and TSAM to jointly and automatically handle most common issues that can arise, thus achieving the business potential of clouds while also mitigating the new challenges and complexities that might otherwise emerge.

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