Pulse 2011: IBM Spotlights Innovative Solutions,
Services

Pulse 2011: IBM Spotlights Innovative Solutions, Services

SERVICE MANAGEMENT IN ACTION Pulse 2011 was billed as the premier service management event of the year. And judging by the wealth of new announcements coming out of the event, that description was right on the money.

At Pulse, IBM pulled back the curtain on an incredible range of new solutions and services collectively aimed at making service management easier, faster, simpler, more innovative, and more cost-effective—in short, smarter—than ever before.

Consider, for instance, the official launch of IBM's new Smarter Computing initiative. Today, IT is not just the central nervous systems of organizations; it's the central nervous system of the entire planet. And when we find new ways to connect previously separate domains, we can create new intelligence and new value. How can we accomplish this? New analytical approaches that transcend traditional data warehousing. Newly optimized solutions. New service delivery architectures, such as cloud computing. All can play a key role going forward.

The story coming out of Pulse isn't just about future possibilities, though. It's also about current realities.

As a reflection of the unpredictable economy we face today, the new IBM announcements directly acknowledge near-term business concerns. Infrastructural affordability, simplicity, and flexibility, for example, are all close to the heart of budget-challenged IT managers and CFOs. For this reason, IBM now offers new solutions designed to centralize management, and maximize business value, in areas from virtualization to cloud management to network endpoints.

Another key aspect of service management is product and service innovation, to create new value in new ways. Helpful in this department: innovative, new offerings from IBM related to smart building management, end-to-end management of utility infrastructures, and real-time asset location. And because it's important to be able to predict (and improve) the business outcome of services, IBM also unveiled new offerings such as analytics tools, service desk solutions, and improved security systems—all of which reduce risk by helping to identify and resolve emerging problems of many kinds (or prevent them from occurring in the first place).

Together, these new announcements clearly illustrate IBM's vision of Integrated Service Management: a better outcome via smarter services and smarter management of them. And IBM offers three basic ways to pursue that goal.

Integrated Service Management for Data Centers

“At Pulse, IBM pulled back the curtain on an incredible range of new solutions and services collectively aimed at making service management easier, faster, simpler, more innovative, and more cost-effective—in short, smarter—than ever before.”

Data centers are the heart of IT operations and the basic engine of internal and external services. Integrated Service Management for Data Centers improves service quality and integrity via better visibility (seeing the business), control (making real-time adjustments to how business strategies are pursued), and automation (accelerated, standardized execution of everyday tasks).

Pulse announcements in this category address key IT domains such as:

  • Asset management. IBM Maximo Data Center Infrastructure Management and Maximo Space Management for Facilities 7.1 deliver intuitive visualization of asset arrangement in data center and facilities contexts. This is key information needed to get the best ROI from every square foot of space-limited environments—smarter utilization of all the existing space, instead of the purchase and management of new space.
  • Service availability and performance. Together, IBM Tivoli OMNIbus and Network Manager 8.3.0 now help organizations keep services up and running better than ever before, thanks to accelerated discovery of assets, enhanced status monitoring, new visualization features, and new root-cause analysis across logical and physical networks. IBM Tivoli Netcool Configuration Manager 6.2 offers "preemptive compliance"—essentially, proposed configuration changes are compared to existing policies to reduce the odds of a compliance violation. And IBM Tivoli Netcool Performance Manager 1.3.1 backs up new support for IPv6 with a new Operational Console, to visualize real-time changes more quickly and easily.
  • Platform management, virtualization management, and image management. As IT architectures grow more sophisticated, IT managers need new ways to ensure services continue to perform up to expectations. Directly on point: the new IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Virtual Servers 6.2.3, which provides predictive capacity planning based on different scenarios for VMware-based environments, as well as new hypervisor support for Linux KVM and Citrix XenServer environments. IBM's flagship provisioning tool, IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager 7.2, now includes advanced system image management (for both the image library and deployment) and supports a variety of different hypervisor classes. Also updated: IBM Tivoli System Automation, which helps to keep key services going via scriptable if-then response scenarios for different types of possible failure during complex workloads.
  • Service delivery and process automation. IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager is a new, centralized solution that helps IT manage the complete lifecycle of endpoint tasks; in fact, endpoints themselves do most of the work, thanks to an exceptionally intelligent agent, rather than a management server. The results? Simplified oversight and compliance, reduced costs, and faster software rollouts. And IBM Tivoli Live - service manager, another new solution, gives organizations another way to provide key IT domains like service requests/service catalogs, change and configuration management, and asset management: instead of an in-house infrastructure, pay-as-you-go convenience via services running on an IBM cloud.
  • Storage management. By virtualizing storage, you make it a fluid resource allocatable when and where it's needed—in real time—instead of a static resource tied to specific hardware. One excellent way to pursue that goal: the new IBM SAN Volume Controller for the new IBM XIV disk system (now at version 10.2.4)—a single point of control for new clustering, failover, site-switching, and replication functions. Also noteworthy is the new IBM Storwiz V7000, a disk system aimed at mid-market, growing organizations, on which all storage is virtualized; an additional strength is disaster recovery via data replication, both onsite and offsite. The IBM Information Archive appliance has been updated to version 2.1 and now provides broad support for Windows applications, as well as a new capability to offload primary storage at will and rapid location of specific data for legal or compliance purposes. And IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments 6.2 now delivers smarter, faster backup and recovery for VMware virtual machines, thanks to integration with both VMware's vSphere offering and IBM's own Fastback solution.
  • Security, risk, and compliance. The aforementioned brand-new IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager offers a powerful suite of security benefits applicable to almost any infrastructure. Among others: vulnerability analysis and discovery of noncompliant assets, automated configuration management including endpoint firewalls, and rapid notification to managers in the event a violation of security policies is found. And organizations looking for best-in-class intrusion prevention will find it in the new IBM Security Network Intrusion Prevention System GX7800—now boasting the second generation of IBM's PAM analysis engine—as well as support for 10Gb Ethernet networks, making the GX7800 suitable for even the most demanding environments (such as the enterprise core).

Finally, IBM now offers new information protection services delivered via IBM-managed clouds. The first provides analysis of how well an organization's data is backed up and archived, as well as specific recommendations in the event changes are needed. The second is essentially a software-as-a-service version of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, IBM's flagship solution for data backup, now offered online from IBM's Global Technology Services group.

Integrated Service Management for Design and Delivery

The historical walls between IT development and IT operations teams are coming down. And IBM is playing a major role in making that happen via Integrated Service Management for Design and Delivery solutions.

New integrations, spanning its Tivoli service management portfolio and Rational software development portfolio, not only make for better software and a better business outcome—they also make for a more collaborative environment, in which everyone is on the same page and pertinent information is available when and where it's needed.

At Pulse, two new integrations make the case for that claim. The first links IBM Rational Team Concert with IBM Tivoli Service Request Manager. This means that when issues emerge with collaborative, Jazz-based services, IT operations team members can enter and track problem tickets using their own service desk solution...and as changes in IT development occur, service desk personnel can stay apprised, and manage end-user expectations appropriately.

The second new integration links IBM Rational System Architect and IBM Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager. For members of the development team (specifically, software architects), it is now possible to understand the nature and interaction of production environments more clearly than ever by using the Tivoli solution's topology and visualization features (previously only available to members of the IT operations team).

Beyond solution integrations, IBM is also offering new consulting services—specifically, IBM Workplace Strategy and Design Services—to help clients assess and develop the software-driven services they need more accurately, quickly, and cost-effectively.

Integrated Service Management for Industries

Service management means different things in different industries; what applies to healthcare may not apply to banking or aerospace or utilities. Improving service management will therefore require a tailored, industry-savvy approach, one that acknowledges and resolves the most pressing complexities and challenges in any given case.

At Pulse, a smorgasbord of new and updated solutions and services were rolled out to help organizations in a variety of industries. Among other Integrated Service Management for Industries solutions:

  • Energy and utilities. A new intelligent meter network management offering, built on the SAFE framework, provides end-to-end service management over the complete metering infrastructure.
  • Healthcare. IBM Real-Time Asset Locator for Healthcare 7.1 can help these organizations track the physical location of assets wherever they may go—accelerating asset retrieval in emergencies, simplifying ongoing maintenance and status monitoring, and helping to keep assets in designated areas.
  • Smarter buildings. A new joint offering from IBM and Johnson Controls will deliver pre-integrated management and analytics tools to optimize energy consumption, space management, asset utilization, and many other areas. IBM is also entering into a new partnership with Autodesk to integrate that company's building design solutions with the IBM Maximo asset management family.
  • Smarter cities. Via IBM's new approach, bolstered by new solutions to govern water management and drive a central operations center, resources can be allocated in a far more prioritized and efficient way for the benefit of all citizens.

Rounding out this group of announcements: an intelligent site operations solution to help communications providers improve end-to-end service assurance and overall infrastructural ROI; and a cloud software solution for service providers, to serve as a scalable, accelerated platform for cloud-based services of all kinds.

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