Posts from — December 2007

• Making Optimal Use of JMX in Custom Application Monitoring Systems
  best practices for using Java Management Extensions (JMX) in monitoring and management applications
  (tags: appmgmt monitoring application_performance jmx j2ee appservermonitoring compositeapplications cam)

• The Year Ahead in B.I.: Operational Business Intelligence, Open-Source Tools and More
  So the drive to extend actionable business intelligence to a broader audience—frontline employees and even customers and partners—will continue in 2008, putting the spotlight on operational business tools.
  (tags: BI operationalintelligence ops-bi bam bsm business-service-management)
• Actix Delivers Dramatic Efficiency Gains
  Studies by Actix with more than a dozen large network operators in all three major world regions have reveal that radio access network experts are productive for just 3.5 hours per day on average, meaning more than half the average working day is wasted.
  (tags: actix radioaccessnetwork monitoring ranmonitoring operations opex)
• Eclipse RCP: The Oil and Gas Industry using Eclipse - BIRT -
  We used BIRT for our spectral analysis editor. It made for fast development cycle but the business oriented charting isn’t up to plotting thousands of data points.

  ** Hmm, what would this mean for large scale use as TCR with Tivoli TDW?? **

  (tags: BIRT TCR Eclipse Tivoli)

Not sure what our friends over at generationE are planning, but this popped up on my radar today. I hope they plan to offer some real world content and contributions and that this isn’t just a sales & marketing thing. They’re one of our better Netcool oriented partners so I’d love for them to share about some of their successes, how they can help companies create powerful BSM solutions from the Tivoli side and the BMC side.

TBSM - by generationE Technologies

I think it’s a gold mine for a business partner(s) to grab BSM and really run with it from end-to-end. Someone who can help advise clients from a consultative level (BSM Strategy and Roadmap) and then over time, help them implement the thing’s I talk about in this blog. It’s going to pay off for someone out there who can really reach out and help clients get the most value out of their investments - and can back that up repetitively with any client in any environment.

• O’Reilly Media | Visualizing Data
  You’ll learn basic visualization principles, how to choose the right kind of display for your purposes, and how to provide interactive features to design entire interfaces around large, complex data sets.
  (tags: visualization datavisualizationandgraphing bi charts graphs book)
• If dashboard’s are the end game, kill me now…: James Taylor’s Decision Management
  First problem is that dashboards are still backward looking. Surely the endgame for BI must involve some kind of predicting of the future, some looking forward?
  (tags: bi dashboards)
• Business Service Management Update - BSM Can Help The Services-Oriented IT Department, But Is It Overkill For SMEs?
  Hubbert (Forrester) says that SMEs are probably better served by first ensuring they have comprehensive, robust monitoring solutions in place, augmenting them with a service analysis product such as those from Netuitive or ProactiveNet.
  (tags: bsm business-service-management forrester)

• The Year in Review, The Year Ahead - BI & Dashboards
  Dashboards (more precisely, dashboard-driven data visualization technologies) figured large this year. In 2007, it was all about eye candy.
  (tags: dashboards bi)
• Ribbit - Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company
  Ribbit is a new kind of Phone Company, born from the realization that legacy phone companies are not going to bring us the communication innovation we are all looking for
  (tags: voip phone telephony)
• Coping with the costs of application migrations
  customer interviews revealed average migration project takes more than 20 “man-weeks” and costs on average $72,000 for labor. Total IT “direct-headcount” costs involved with application migration projects fall in the range of $500,000 and $800,000.
  (tags: it-cost migration-cost upgrade-cost)
• Nimsoft Unveils New Online Portal to Drive IT Service Management
  NimBUS Enterprise Console ‘2.0,’ a powerful online portal next generation of intuitive dashboards built using Rich Internet Application technology that delivers dynamic views to help users track the health of their technology environment.
  (tags: nimsoft dashboard ria performancemgt monitoring)
• MyEclipse Reports | Easy Eclipse Reporting Tools
  MyEclipse Reports greatly simplifies the process of developing, deploying and testing a wide range of web reports. MyEclipse Reports consists of a suite of advanced report development tools and a runtime report engine.
  (tags: eclipse birt my-eclipse bi TCR)

Another quiet release of the free (with registration) ITUP tool occurred recently. The FREE ITUP tool is a great reference for anyone seeking to gain insight into IT best practice areas such as ITILv3, COBIT, PRM-IT and eTOM. One of the unique features is a mapping to some of the common Tivoli tools so the monitoring groups can see how and where they can enable or support these process activities. The ITUP Composer incorporates the Rational Method Composer so you can customize and publish your own processes based on any of this content.

The new ITUP 7.1.1 release is available here and includes the following:

• Includes dedicated section on IT Governance.
• Includes a detailed mapping from the ITIL version 3 processes and practices to the ITUP processes and maps ITIL V3 processes to applicable IBM tools.
• IBM’s Process Reference Model for IT (PRM-IT) is included in the ITUP Tool. PRM-IT is a process reference model that covers all 41 processes under the control of the Chief Information Officer.
• Operational processes covered by ITIL best practices have been documented down to the granular task level.

• The Endgame for Business Intelligence — Dashboard Design
  we need to design desktop dashboards with simplicity. This is the organization’s last opportunity to transform investments into added value. It’s the last opportunity to transform information into knowledge.
  (tags: dashboards design implementation value bi)

• NGea Solutions
  NGea provides integration solutions in the area of Network and Business Service Management with special expertise in the IBM Tivoli Netcool Suite, Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager (TADDM) and IBM Tivoli Monitors (ITM).
  (tags: NGEA consulting businesspartners)
• Business Service Management: Delivering Value Throughout the Service Lifecycle
  This podcast is a discussion of what organizations can gain by implementing Business Service Management solutions, which manage services based on business needs.
  (tags: CA BSM business-service-management podcast)