thoughts on business, service and technology operations and management

I will be at Pulse all next week and eager to meet many of you that may follow my blog. I’d be very interested in talking shop with you and hearing about your own individual journey towards Business Service Management.

If you’re interested in doing a podcast, I’ll have a new gadget with me to try and capture as many different definitions for what folks think Business Service Management is. I’m calling it the “BSM Defined Mashup” podcast project. Seek me out and tell me your thoughts! I’ll keep it anonymous if you’d like.

I’ve been designated as a “Guru” so you’re supposed to also be able to meet with me at the “Guru Galaxy” and reserve one-on-one time with me if you desire. The “Guru Galaxy” event should have adult beverages which should make for some lively conversations.

My session is on Wednesday afternoon if you’re up for some practical advice for planning on implementing our TBSM products in the near future. Stop on by and let me know you read the blog!

If you’re using Twitter I’m “dmcclure” if you’d like to send me message. I will be following #ibmpulse. You can also GTalk me at “dmcclure”.

My friends over at NetForecast have been chatting me up about endeavors to make BSM simpler and more successful. There are many barriers to entry and the realities have been well documented that BSM just isn’t something that can be taken on by unprepared organizations.

I’ll credit Peter for coining the term “BSM Lite” which closely aligns to many of my ideas and thoughts for “BSM 2.0″ or “BSM Next Generation”. From Peter’s post today:

“The world needs what we’ll call BSM Lite–a simpler, less expensive, more responsive way of achieving BSM. Remember that Doug McClure says BSM should be achieved at least as much through people and how they are organized and motivated as through technology. Enterprises can achieve BSM with a combination of modest tool investments and smart, properly tuned organizations. Although BSM Lite will not come easily or quickly, it should carry a smaller price tag. It will start to show business/IT linkage using targeted views that grow into the big picture over time. “

I think the folks at FireScope may well be on their way to this (what’s up with B.E.?). Nimsoft may have something similar planned as they venture towards redefining Business Service Management.

How would you define “BSM Lite”? How would you approach implementing “BSM Lite” with as little new investments as possible? How would you change the status quo in your environment? Could you? Is “BSM Lite” a tactical approach that needs a strategic solution in the long run? Please share your top ten list of what “BSM Lite” may be!

• Network management takes interface tips from gaming industry, Google
  While the Big Four — BMC, CA, HP and IBM — have been slow to respond with improvements in their management lines, a number of smaller players have been quick to fill the void, and network administrators are thankful for it.
  (tags: monitoring user-experience GUI networkmanagement)

• IBM - ITM v6.2 - Event Integration with TEC/Omnibus
  After a brief overview on ITM v6.x integration with TEC and Omnibus, we will specifically cover the new features introduced in v6.2 (Event Forwarding enhancements, Common Event Console).
  (tags: IBM Tivoli ITM TEC Netcool OMNIbus eventmanagement event integration)

• Leading Independent Research Firm Assesses ASG’s Business Service Management Platform
  ASG’s practical BSM approach combined with its offer of risk-free technical validations, attractive, enterprise-level pricing and a highly flexible financing program makes ASG a focused and fierce competitor.
  (tags: bsm business-service-management ASG analyst forrester)
• Ten things I learned about CA | Judith Hurwitz
  CA is focusing a lot of attention on the area of business service management.
  (tags: CA bsm business-service-management analyst)

Michael Biddick has put together a gloomy article on the realities of implementing Business Service Management over here. While I do not agree with much of what he says, he’s certainly correct that it’s a challenge for most organizations to successfully implement Business Service Management.

–snip–

However, this promised future of BSM as a product is far from assured. We’re seeing early BSM adopters feeling downright gloomy, mainly as a result of unmet expectations. Many deployments simply don’t provide clear links between IT events and business services. In others, things start out well enough, but maintaining systems lacking in automation is not realistic given limited IT staff. The truth is, you can’t buy your way to BSM, and companies that persist in thinking a single product, no matter how big, complex, and expensive, will deliver are doomed to disappointment.

–snip–

Why are clients expectations being unmet? Is it because they’ve put their faith in a suite of tools and technologies over the changes required to implement Business Service Management successfully? IMO, yes. There are significant organizational barriers to success with Business Service Management that most IT organizations just don’t put the effort into addressing.

My challenge for Michael and his Information Week series would be to stop talking about the product and vendor capabilities and really start a series that shows companies how they can get started.

Don’t tell us we need a service catalog, CMDB, or application discovery tool, tell us how we can use the investments we’ve already made in millions of dollars worth of software to achieve service management excellence.

Tell us how to define a Business Service Management strategy that’s right for our own company, how to create a roadmap, architecture and design that guides every initiative and project at our company along the lines of service centric, top down, business aligned, operationally superior Business Service Management.

I know Michael’s company has the capability and background and hopefully they are helping establish these things when deploying software from these vendors. I challenge Michael to share these experiences. Talk about how we as vendors and you as consulting and systems integrators can improve a clients environment and chances of success with Business Service Management after the sale has been done.

The time is now to start talking about what needs to be done for clients to succeed with Business Service Management!

• BSM Vendors Push Products, But Process Is More Important
  Get ahead of the crowd here–in the future, every IT organization will be service-centric in some form. Yet few organizations will point to a single BSM product or vendor that got them through the storm.
  (tags: bsm business service management)

• Step to Fusion - Centralize the Management of Your Applications on Oracle Enterprise Manager
  Oracle has made quite a bit of progress in solidifying its application management portfolio in the past 18 months. This started with management packs that are designed specifically for managing Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise and Siebel.
  (tags: Oracle oracleenterprisemanager appmgmt monitoring OEM)
• SysMech Buys Zenulta
  The event correlation technology is a radically new approach to Enterprise Correlation that breaks down the barriers of correlation technologies.
  (tags: SysMech Zenulta OSS eventandfaultcorelation eventmgmt correlation)
• Systems Mechanics Leaders in Network & Service Solutions. The power behind telecoms - Home
  specialists in network and service assurance,
  (tags: sysmech oss networkassurance serviceassurance assurance monitoring telecom)
• Systems Mechanics Leaders in Network & Service Solutions. The power behind telecoms - HP TeMIP
  UK’s leading independent HP TeMIP Consultancy
  (tags: sysmech HP TeMIP)
• SysMech Zen
  “Proximity correlation”, will empower businesses with the ability to provide levels of correlation (element, network and service), orders of magnitude beyond what is possible today. manage 10’s of thousands of events per second.
  (tags: sysmech zen eca correlation eventmgmt monitoring)
• Zenulta - Solutions
  Given that Zenulta’s Proximity Correlation is a step change in enterprise-wide event correlation why consider other older solutions?
  (tags: zenulta proximitycorrelation correlation ECA events eventmanagement)