IBM Unveils the ISM Library: Smart accelerators, high ROI

The smarter planet demands new links between assets and information

Service Management in Action As the world's digital infrastructure becomes smarter—more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent—some of the most compelling changes will come from linking currently isolated solutions and data pools. And IBM is leading the way in making that happen.

Consider the common situation in which an organization wants to create a new service. Perhaps, for instance, it wants to offer cloud computing to external customers, as a resource-optimized hosted environment.

It already has monitoring tools used to track performance internally. Now it wants to use the same tools to monitor services in the cloud as well, keeping external customers apprised of performance in real time over the Web.

This new, smarter service will demand optimized integration—"accelerators"—capable of bridging the gap.

The ISM Library: Get tomorrow's smarter services today

“Today, the ISM Library also boasts a new interface and new features to match its extraordinary value proposition. IBM has carefully redesigned the ISM Library Web site to create a richer, more rewarding customer experience in general—helping customers to get exactly the information they need, as quickly as possible.” It was with exactly this kind of situation in mind that IBM founded the Open Process Automation Library—OPAL—in 2004. And while OPAL originally focused exclusively on IBM Tivoli solutions, it is now a far richer and more diverse information repository, with more than 1800 accelerators spanning both IBM and non-IBM solutions.

Now, IBM has taken the next logical step, by dramatically enhancing OPAL with service management in mind, and renaming it to suit: the Integrated Service Management (ISM) Library.

In this renaming, IBM's commitment to helping its customers get a superior business outcome through integrated service management is apparent. And for organizations seeking to deliver smarter services to the smarter planet, the ISM Library is an incredibly valuable resource—and access to it is available for free to anyone.

By leveraging ISM Library accelerators in different ways to address different needs, organizations can obtain more business value with incredible speed. For instance, suppose an organization is interested in implementing a service management architecture, to achieve improved visibility, control and automation over its revenue-generating external services.

ISML accelerators can do just that—accelerate rollout—by linking infrastructural point A to infrastructural point B in a proven, effective manner that takes best practices into account. This in turn will translate into a faster time-to-market for services, enhanced competitive distinction, reduced costs, increased ROI and many other business benefits.

In the ISM Library, IBM also offers unique value to technology professionals. No competitor offers a comparable library of cross-solution accelerators spanning as many domains and business contexts.

A remodeled interface, with many great new features to solve users' challenges

Today, the ISM Library also boasts a new interface and new features to match its extraordinary value proposition. IBM has carefully redesigned the ISM Library Web site to create a richer, more rewarding customer experience in general—helping customers to get exactly the information they need, as quickly as possible.

Other new improvements include:

A new, faster data engine
A friendly Web 2.0 front end
A more comprehensive and customizable search engine
A wider variety of possible paths to target accelerators

These features and others empower users to zero in on exactly what they require, faster and more easily. For instance, users can now locate solutions using default indexes such as title, company, product, integration type and service management categories. Accelerators can also be viewed by industry. Among other supported industries: aerospace, banking, computer services, energy and utilities, government, healthcare and telecommunications.

A rotating feature list that changes every half hour helps keep site users apprised of new developments as they're rolled out. And should users find that particular accelerators have delivered impressive business value for them, they can submit success stories to the site and have them published. If they find they need still more features—or would like improvements to existing features—they can easily submit feedback and reviews to IBM.

Thus, in the same way that any spoke will get an ant to the hub of a wheel, the ISM Library now gives users many context-aware ways to access the information they need.

Get superior ROI from the solutions you already have

The site also reflects IBM's ongoing awareness of changing customer needs and interests since it was launched.

In 2009, for example, energy management was a major focus for IBM's clients and many accelerators focused on this area were added. Many of these involve IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM), the technology industry's leading monitoring solution for status/health updates over IT infrastructures.

And so today, should clients wish to use ITM to track the Metasys building management system from Johnson Controls, they will find an accelerator that can do the job, and third-party accelerators are offered as well. One recent for-instance: an accelerator from Amazon to allow users of its Elastic Computer Cloud offering to track cloud performance of hosted services using ITM. (This, in essence, fulfills the hypothetical scenario that began the article.)

If you consider these last two examples together, the value proposition of the ISM Library becomes crystal-clear. IBM Tivoli customers who have already made the investment in ITM are now empowered to get a far superior ROI from that investment in two completely new domains.

Consider: ITM was probably originally purchased exclusively to monitor internal IT assets such as servers, storage arrays and security tools.

But thanks to the ISM Library, it is now being used to monitor a building management system—which is traditionally considered part of Facilities in most organizations, not IT at all. ITM is also now being used to track the performance of an external cloud service delivered by Amazon—a completely different infrastructure owned and managed by a completely different organization.

This expansion of the business value created by ITM is impressive indeed. And what's more, it will climb over time as ITM is utilized in even more ways, based on new ISM Library accelerators—because more are being added all the time.

The result? Smarter services, managed in smarter ways, for a smarter business outcome.

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