Defining what BSM is and the expected value from it SHOULD NOT be any more complicated than what this sticker says! Stay tuned for more on this topic!
Leave a comment if you’d like a sticker like this for your laptop!
Business Service Management (BSM)
Business Service Management is an enabling technology at the intersection of business and IT alignment. The days of IT organizations operating with only an understanding of the IT perspective are quickly passing. Business Service Management brings the business perspective and context to the IT environment. Business Service Management solutions help IT understand how their infrastructure and technology investments support the business and how business benefits from that IT infrastructure and technology.
Business Service Management is a strategy, approach and methodology for aligning IT elements to the goals of the business. Business Service Management is about communicating the right message at the right time to the right level within IT and the business in business terms or IT terms as appropriate for each audience. Business Service Management is about delivering and maintaining quality services, applications, processes, activities and transactions to the business so business goals and objectives are met – not ITs.
Business Service Management is about understanding how IT impacts the business and how business impacts IT. It’s about the known and unknown relationships and dependencies between IT and the business. How either one may affect the other. How IT best practices, processes and activities such as change and release management may impact a business entity, transaction, process or activity.
What was done years ago by creating a “single pane of glass” for the network and systems management industry, Business Service Management creates a similar “single pane of glass” for IT infrastructure and technology and how it supports and enables the business to meet its goals and objectives (make money, control costs, etc.)
Business Service Management is the integration and consolidation of systems management with business management. It’s the creation of service and operational level agreements (SLA/SLO), underpinning contracts (UPCs), policies, rules and thresholds for business services, applications, processes, activities and transactions much the same way it’s done for a server or network device. Business Service Management is about enabling IT operations and support staff with empowering information that helps them to understand the impact on the business in business terms. Business Service Management helps IT at all levels prioritize restoration, improve communication, and establish deeper relationships with their business peers.
Business Service Management isn’t just about presenting a pretty dashboard with fancy dials, gauges, stoplights or colors. Business Service Management is the management of IT with a purpose on purpose. Business Service Management solutions, dashboards and information communicate purpose built messages tailored for each specific audience. The IT infrastructure and technology information, status, metrics, etc. are organized and grouped together with the proper context and technique so that these audiences can make important decisions or take action that enables continued business success.
Business Service Management is about understanding the business perspective also known as the “top down perspective”. What value, revenue, cost, churn, ROI, etc. can be associated with the IT services, applications, processes, transactions, etc. being delivered and supported by your IT organization? How does IT enable the business to meet their goals and objectives? What are the “hidden linkages” between business and IT performance and compensation plans and business and IT service availability, performance, etc? Business Service Management leaves no stone unturned. Business services, activities, processes, transactions, etc. are understood from the business user’s perspective, internally and externally, in their terms, their language, their performance expectations, understanding the impact on their jobs, productivity, goals and objectives, etc.
Business Service Management is an evolutionary process that takes time and energy to implement. Don’t expect to get Business Service Management out of the box or overnight. Every industry, vertical, segment, new venture, product line, service offering, etc. is unique. A vendor’s solution may get you in the ballpark, but significant work will still be required along the way towards reaching your desired maturity state. There are significant dependencies on getting your own house in order and building a strong relationship with others both in IT and the business to be successful with Business Service Management. The people and process components of Business Service Management solutions are equally, if not more, important than the technology components you’ll get from a vendor. The Business Service Management Maturity Model topics in future postings will give you an idea of how to understand where you are and where you may want to be over time.
Take the time to consider these ideas as you craft your own definition of Business Service Management. You’ll be more successful if you can remove as much grey area as possible about what Business Service Management is and why it’s important for your company. Align it with the company/CEO/CIO’s goals and objectives, what’s important to the business units you support, etc. Spend as much time as possible focusing on tangible and measurable benefits. The soft benefits will be plenty, but through hard work and relationship building you should be able to quantify measurable value and benefit from Business Service Management with your new found business peers and partners.
Business Service Management (BSM) Google Knol
Business Service Management Knol
BSM Lite
Interview with Doug McClure on BSM Lite
Various Interviews, Podcasts, etc. Related to my Thoughts on BSM
Doug McClure Tells a BSM Story
Doug McClure: Thoughts on BSM, ITSM, Change and Release Management
Q&A with Doug McClure: Is BSM Lite the Answer?
Good Read & Current BSM Defined: What it is and what it should never be
Paul Burns: Better ITIL Implementations with Business Service Management
Vendor Definitions
Hear IBM Tivoli’s Dan Tabor (Sr. Product Manager for BSM) discuss BSM and the Tivoli BSM story here.
FireScope’s President defines his version of BSM: http://www.technologysnapshots.com/2007/11/intro-to-bsm-fu.html
Managed Objects blog posting on BSM definitions
JBoss’ Service Activity Monitoring (SAM) Concept
I’m not sure where I sit on this concept yet. I certainly understand this and BAM, but I continue to see these all as components of maturing BSM solutions, regardless of context, data, audience/organization.
http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=138317
http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/SAM
http://jboss-overlord.blogspot.com/2008/06/goodbye-bambi-hello-samsi.html
Analyst Definitions
EMA’s Lisa Erickson-Harris
Good intro and contrast of SLM/BSM: http://www.emausa.com/web/ema_ac0108.php
Can you buy BSM? http://www.cioupdate.com/trends/article.php/3724196
Deb Curtis – Gartner
A category of IT operations management software products that link the availability and performance status of IT infrastructure components to business-oriented IT services that enable business processes
To qualify for the BSM category, a product must:
- Support the definition, storage and visualization of IT service topology or dependency maps
- Gather real-time operational status data from underlying applications and IT infrastructure components
- Process status data against the object model to communicate real-time IT service status
BSM is NOT…
- IT service management
- An IT service catalog
- Business process automation
- Business activity monitoring
- Magic fairy dust that automatically aligns IT with the business!
Marcia Kaufman, Partner at Hurwitz & Associates writes in IT Analysis on September 23rd, 2005:
Business Service Management (BSM) software supports the alignment of IT with business processes. BSM is the level above IT Service Management (ITSM) software which many organizations use to monitor infrastructure and services from an IT perspective. For example, a BSM (business-focused) metric might look at the dollar impact of server downtime as opposed to an ITSM (IT-focused) metric that identifies the percent uptime for the same server. In principal, BSM helps IT and business begin to understand what is happening with their business processes from a business perspective.There are common threads running between the various BSM offerings. Most BSM vendors emphasize the same benefits – the ability to deliver business services faster and more consistently, while lowering overall IT costs, decreasing business risk and increasing revenue to the business. Commonalities in the offerings include:
- Emphasis on utilizing best practices such as following ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) standards.
- Importance of a Configuration Management Database (CMDB), where information about IT assets such as servers, routers, and desktops is stored. The concept of the CMDB emerged from ITIL, and it contains the history and interrelationships between system components. According to ITIL, it is central to service management. The CMDB can be an important underpinning to a BSM offering.
- Providing a means to map IT resources to business processes.
- Tying into competitors products – BSM products should be able to bring in information/events from other vendor’s service management products to provide a complete analysis from a business perspective.
- Providing a dashboard for visualization of the higher-level business-focused metrics.
Forrester Research describes BSM solution and implementation maturity
First-generation BSM:
- Provided a way of defining and describing business processes;
- Performed discovery (partly manual, partly automatic) of IT service components;
- Mapped (partly manual, partly automatic) business processes to IT components;
- Provided adapters to other infrastructure management products;
- Measured end-to-end performance for business processes;
- Measured the business impact of downtime;
- Analyzed the root causes of incidents resulting in downtime; and
- Provided dashboard views so that selected target audiences can combine relevant information.
The second generation of BSM goes much further, adding:
- Auto-discovering Layers 2 through 7;
- Providing a more intuitive way of describing “Layer 8,” the business process;
- Creating dependency maps and maintaining relationships between business processes and IT components automatically; and
- Integration into a virtual CMDB.
Trade Magazine Articles
Market Analysis: Business Service Management – The Network Effect – Network Architects managing massive infrastructures must make sure a downed server in North America doesn’t mean the loss of a six-figure contract in Singapore. Is BSM the answer? Can it close the gap between IT and business goals? Sep 1, 2005 | By Bruce Boardman http://www.networkcomputing.com/showitem.jhtml?docid=1617f1
- I think Bruce hits the nail on the head in the second paragraph of his article:
“The ambitious BSM initiatives touted by vendors may or may not come to pass, and that’s OK, because BSM is not a product. It’s a process, a maturation of IT infrastructure management. Software that promises improved service mapping to underlying infrastructures is a building block.” … “But the more important piece of BSM is a comprehensive and flexible internal IT management strategy that incorporates best practices, especially those espoused by the ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library).”
- He also nails the other key piece related to the alignment of IT and the business:
“IT must work with business owners to map their goals to the underlying infrastructure. BSM tools must record IT’s quantification of good response and required availability, then map metrics like page load times and 24/7 response onto specific infrastructure and operational practices. For example, which servers, services and network devices are key to providing Web customers with fast page views? What will it take to maintain fast response times? How will the outage of a particular server impact widget sales?
Creating a common, service-oriented lingua franca between IT and business groups is the most important challenge–and benefit–of a BSM initiative. Business owners and management don’t want more granular detail. They don’t want to hear what IT must do to meet the desired metrics. They want to talk about meeting customer needs and business goals.
But beware: All this teamwork sounds warm and fuzzy, and mapping server response times and availability seems straightforward. But the hard truth for IT groups accustomed to laying down the law is that, for BSM to work, serving end users and customers trumps IT management edicts.”
- And follows this up with a great tie in to ITIL and the CMDB as dependencies for a complete BSM undertaking:
“… but process stability and best practices are IT’s responsibility. This is why ITIL must be included in a total BSM implementation. At the heart of this practical reality exists a repository to keep IT system configuration straight: the CMDB (configuration management database).
The CMDB is defined by ITIL as a repository where configuration, metadata, status and even performance data, and their relationships to one another, are tracked to support such processes as incident and change management.”
BSM Tools Map Quest: We tested five BSM application topology mapping suites on our business applications lab network to determine the impact of outages and changes. Our Editor’s Pick won for the best dependency mapping, but you may find our runner up a better value. Sep 1, 2005 | By Bruce Boardman http://www.networkcomputing.com/showitem.jhtml?docid=1617f2
Business services management: IT’s higher calling. This latest management scheme promises to prove IT’s value by linking business and technical information in a logical whole. Can BSM live up to its billing? Network World, 09/27/04 http://www.networkworld.com/buzz/2004/092704bsm.html
- Good overall review of BSM and what it takes to get started. Good points on the need for unique skillsets to bridge the gaps between IT and the business.
BSM defined by NetworkWorld: http://www.networkworld.com/details/6164.html?brl
What is BSM, Anyway? Marcia Kaufman, Partner Hurwitz & Associates Published: 23rd September, 2005 http://www.it-analysis.com/content.php?articleid=12908
- Good definition of BSM and then jumps into describing the HP and BMC solution and differences in their approaches for BSM.
In pursuit of alignment – Business service management aims to link the delivery of IT capabilities directly to the needs and goals of the enterprise. Which technologies and suppliers are delivering on that promise? Author: Pete Swabey 21 January 2005 http://www.infoconomy.com/pages/bpm-technology/group103182.adp
- Pete does a great job touching on all of the key BSM points.
Take Control of Business Services By John K. Waters 10/1/2005 http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=11842
- John does a great job touching on all of the key BSM points.
http://www.gcn.com/24_30/tech-report/37206-1.html
http://www.softwarebusinessonline.com/newsletter_mar05.htm#feature
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1397,1783285,00.asp
BSM – ITSM Done Right? July 2007
The Three Faces of Business Service Management – by Dennis Drogseth 11-21-05
- http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/nsm/2005/1121nsm1.html?page=1
Vendor Definitions
- IBM: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/solutions/bsm/
- Micromuse: http://www.micromuse.com/sols/bsm.html
- Managed Objects: http://www.managedobjects.com/bsm/whatisbsm.jsp
- Systar: http://www.systar.com/solutions/bsm.asp
- EMC/SMARTS: http://www.smarts.com/products/insight/
- HP: http://www.managementsoftware.hp.com/solutions/bsm/index.html
- BMC: http://www.bmc.com/BMC/Common/Templates/hou_generic_tab/0,,19052_34957721,00.html
- Mercury: http://www.mercury.com/us/products/bto-enterprise/
Misc. Sources
Cisco Press book “Optimizing Applications on Cisco Networks†mention: http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=363890&seqNum=4&rl=1
Key BSM Definition Take Aways
- Linkage between IT and Business
- Availability, Performance, Business Metrics
- Dashboards / Reports
- Service Modeling and Dependency Mapping
- Using Business Terms and Perspectives – not IT’s
- Unique Audiences and Messages
Thoughts?