Posts from — August 2006

• Business Service Management (BSM) Software, from Magnum Technologies, Proves to be Worth the Investment – Real World ROI Saves Client 1.2 Million - Magnum Technologies
  Magnum Technologies, the leading business service management firm, today announced its ability to definitively calculate the ROI generated by its BSM software, ADVANTAGE. Magnum Technologies’ Fortune 500 client, with an IT Staff of over 450, reported an
  (tags: Magnum-Technology bsm_value bsm business-service-management)
• Windward Consulting Group Designated Education Center for IBM Tivoli Netcool Software
  Windward Consulting Group, the premier operational management consulting and systems engineering firm, announced today that IBM has designated Windward as an authorized Education Center for IBM Tivoli Netcool Software. Education Centers for IBM Software (
  (tags: Business-Partners Windward-Consulting-Group Tivoli Netcool Training)
• Complex Event Processing and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
  A new class of event-driven applications is emerging to address business challenges in fraud prevention, risk management, compliance verification, customer service, customer acquisition, cross-sell and more.

  These applications involve processes that a

  (tags: CEP EDA SOA BAM BPM real-time Business-Activity-Monitoring events)
• Systems management software may include RSS soon
  Really Simple Syndication (RSS), most often used as a way for Web users to aggregate their desired news into one view, could become another way for data center systems management software to alert IT managers of hardware or software issues, let them know
  (tags: RSS really-simple-syndication systemsmanagement networkmanagement RSSbus bsm-edge dashboard-edge)
• CA’s $2 Billion Cash Call
  Now management is unleashing yet another major restructuring. The goal is to slash roughly 10%, or 1,700 employees from the payroll over the next year. There will also be a $1 billion tender offer for stock from the public this week. In fact, the company
  (tags: CA)
• CA has no soothing words for the channel
  “We continue to focus on building and integrating our solutions to meet the needs of customers,” stated John Swainson, CA’s president and CEO, in the first quarterly statement. But this was already CA’s strategy when it acquired various companies, counter
  (tags: CA)
• GroundWork Introduces Partner Network
  GroundWork Open Source, an open-source management solutions company based in San Francisco, is taking steps to enter the channel by starting a global partner network for VARs and systems integrators. GroundWork announced the new Partner Network at the Lin
  (tags: GroundWork OSS systemsmanagement networkmanagement monitoring)
• Meet the specs: SML models complex IT systems
  Meet the Service Modeling Language specification, a proposed open standard that defines a modeling language complete with a set of constructs to help you model complex system hierarchies for components that manage such elements as configuration, monitorin
  (tags: SML IBM service-modeling-language Modeling servicemodel)
• The Art and Science of Being an I/T Architect: The Many Flavors of IBM ESB Implementations
  This week, the class has focused on how we could implement various Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) scenarios using the different IBM products. (Be prepared for WebSphere overload.) In particular, we’ve talked about:
  (tags: IBM SOA ESB WebSphere)

Sharing information on IBM’s involvement in the SML effort and how emerging specifications enable/affect autonomic computing, ITSM, etc.

-snip-

Meet the Service Modeling Language specification, a proposed open standard that defines a modeling language complete with a set of constructs to help you model complex system hierarchies for components that manage such elements as configuration, monitoring, policy, health, capacity planning, and Service Level Agreements (SLA). One of the effects of SML is to increase the automation of management tasks, thereby reducing the need for a human to intervene in necessary adjustments. This article provides a quick look at the specification.

This series of “Meet the specs” articles focuses on various components of the Service Modeling Language specification. This article includes excerpted and paraphrased text from the original specification.

Full series is available here.

• Touchpaper to Offer Prospects/Clients HDI’s Customer Satisfaction Index
  Touchpaper, an IT Business Management (ITBM) solutions provider, has secured the contract to resell HDI’s Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) Service to prospects and customers of Touchpaper. Click here to learn more about e911 and its impact on VoIP Clic
  (tags: Touchpaper HDI ITSM)
• IT Troubleshooter | InfoWorld | Open Source Network Monitoring Luminaries Compare Approaches / Technologies at LinuxWorld | August 17, 2006 03:04 PM | By Harper Mann
  Yesterday at the LinuxWorld event, an impressive group of some of today’s hottest open source network management projects came together to compare visions / approaches for the network monitoring and management their technologies are tackling, and the comm
  (tags: OSS systemsmanagement networkmanagement monitoring)
• New Metric Promises to Illuminate Application Performance
  Enterprises have armed themselves with a bevy of management and monitoring tools. These products calculate bandwidth utilization, gauge system response time, and identify system and network bottlenecks. Yet amid all the information gleaned, for many firms
  (tags: APDEX application_performance user-experience)

• dBusinessNews :: Daily Business News Delivered to Your Desktop
  FiveRuns today announced the general availability of its Systems Management offering, a hosted Web 2.0 application designed for progressive IT professionals. FiveRuns will demonstrate the software this week during the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisc
  (tags: FiveRuns web2.0 SAAS)

• Asset controls to bolster Tivoli - IT Week
  Separately, Wilkinson said that following its recent acquisition of Micromuse, IBM is on track to deliver a fully integrated business service management (BSM) suite around the end of the year, featuring a “souped-up” user interface and improved servic
  (tags: IBM Tivoli BSM business-service-management)
• Managed Objects Launches ‘Operation Lifeboat’ for Employees Impacted by HP’s Acquisition of Mercury Interactive; Managed Objects To Hold In-Person Interviews During U.S. and European Roadshows
  Managed Objects, the Business Service Management Company, announced the launch of ‘Operation Lifeboat’, a new recruitment program for Mercury Interactive Corp.(TM) employees following the acquisition of Mercury by HP(TM). The tremendous growth of the Busi
  (tags: ManagedObjects HP Mercury M&A jobs)
• MTC-Vodafone launches Harris Executive Dashboard for service and business monitoring of entire GSM/3G network in Kuwait | Harris Corporation
  The NetBoss(R) Executive Dashboard provides managers and executives with a graphical display of network status, usage and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) accessible via the web, quickly and clearly conveying critical service and business information to
  (tags: Harris NetBoss Dashboards)

• BMC Means “Buy My Company” - Motley Fool - MSNBC.com
  BMC (NYSE: BMC) develops software to help companies get cost-savings from its information technology systems. The irony is that, over the past year, the company has been reducing its bloated cost structure, which is starting to result in a fatter bottom l
  (tags: BMC M&A)
• CA’s New Introscope ChangeDetector Simplifies Application Problem Resolution: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
  CA (NYSE: CA - News) today announced Introscope ChangeDetector, the first solution to automatically detect web application changes and enable IT staff to correlate them with changes in application performance. Introscope ChangeDetector uniquely empowers I
  (tags: CA Wiley application_performance appmgmt)
• Performance Management 2.0
  With business performance management having proven itself by providing vendors, consultants and, most importantly, end users with significant benefits and rewards, it is logical that all concerned would like to build upon that success. Performance Managem
  (tags: BPM BPM2.0)

The next Atlanta ITSMF LIG meeting has been scheduled for August 23rd at Cox Enterprises. More information available here.

Meeting topics include a presentation entitled “Quantifying the Value of ITIL Process Automation” given by Robert Caravella, Mercury Interactive.

As Director, Global ROI Development, Mr. Caravella is responsible for developing the process and methodology that Mercury uses to quantify the value of its Business Technology Optimization solutions for customers. The approach has been refined over the past three years through first-hand engagements with IT organizations across multiple industries.

Mr. Caravella has extensive experience “managing the business of IT” from the perspectives of consultant, software provider, and as an IT line and outsourcing manager. He has a detailed understanding of the frameworks, processes, metrics, and products required to manage the IT business. His consulting experience covers IT strategy definition, readiness assessments, transition planning, and IT management process definition for health care, pharmaceutical, utility, manufacturing, transportation, systems integration, government, and university institutions. In addition to Mercury, he has worked for Computer Associates, Platinum Technology, Legent, Boeing and IBM.

His writings have been published by the IBM Corporation, Auerbach’s Journal of Information Systems Management, the State of Illinois, Computer Associates, Platinum Technology, and Legent.

Mr. Caravella holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University and an MBA in Operations Research from New York University. He also completed Boeing’s Executive Development Program.

Schedule:

* 1:30 PM Registration & Introductions
* 1:40 PM Welcome, itSMF Overview & Membership
* 1:50 PM Don McGinnis - itSMF USA Update
* 2:10 PM Robert Caravella - Qualifying the Value of ITIL Process Automation
* 3:00 PM Q & A
* 3:20 PM Wrap-Up and Closure

Heads up on a TUG meeting planned for Austin, TX in September.

—

Just want to send a short shout out to folks in the Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas about the South-Central Tivoli Users group conference scheduled for September 22, 2006. This conference will be located in Austin, Texas on the IBM campus. This promises to be a very good conference with the following topics to be presented:

* ITM 6.1
* TADDAM
* Netcool

This is our first conference of the year since the Tivoli Technical Users Group earlier this year. If you havent signed up, please do so at http://www.tivoli-ug.org/groups.php?groupid=8 .

This is gonna be a great conference and limited seating is available.

Please contact me if you have any questions or comments at tstrike@geocities.com.

Best Regards to all,

JT Edwards
Tivoli South-Central Users Group Chairperson