Category — Firescope

FireScope’s countdown excitement was revealed today (a little bit late ) and their next steps in Business Service Management innovation are now visible. It appears that there will be a 28 day launch cycle of numerous new products and tools.

FireScope’s Business Edition (BE) concept consists of a couple key components aimed as initial entry points for smaller enterprises. The fuller featured Enterprise Editions (EE) are the natural migration paths or starting point for larger enterprises. Pricing modelers are available right on their website.

Some of the “coming soon” tools looks like it puts them in company with PacketTrap and SolarWinds. FireScope BSM:BE and CMDB:BE puts them in company with Nimsoft and Managed Objects.

BSM BE

Optimized for the unique needs of small to medium sized businesses and starting at only $2,450, FireScope BSM:BE features an engaging and user-friendly interface and flexible auto discovery provides rapid time to competency, with multiple setup wizards and inline help designed to make implementation accessible for any level of user.

CMDB BE

FireScope CMDB:Business-Edition delivers the same enterprise-grade functionality as traditional CMDB’s, minus the exhorbitant price tag and pain inducing deployment. For less than $10,000, IT Organizations gain real-time visualization and documentation of their infrastructure along with a complete view of the interrelationships of the software and systems impacting those operations, without the need to hire an army of consultants and mind-numbing planning sessions.

Hmm, the free trial download isn’t available to me yet. Anyone else?

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!

FireScope announced a new initiative around the next generation presentation layer for Business Service Management (BSM) called Engage.

From the overview here, FireScope isn’t just talking, they’re doing. Other vendors (mine included) have the token screen shots of what a product may look like on a Blackberry or iPhone, but the level of effort, customizations, and pain to get them to work (full feature set) keeps them in the “slideware” category in my opinion.

-snip-

“Engage was built by decoupling the interface from FireScope’s service-oriented architecture, giving FireScope users a menu of interface options to select from. In addition to touch screens, other interface options targeted to mobile devices, including an Apple iPhone application, enable ubiquitous Business Service Management.

From CIO to System Administrator, FireScope enables every member of IT to fully immerse themselves in IT operations through the interface method of their choice. A VP of IT may prefer a touch screen mounted on his office wall, while system administrators seamlessly switch between FireScope’s fully customizable portal or mobile interface. Regardless of where you are, or what technology you have on hand, with FireScope Engage you gain instant access to the real-time business impact of IT operations.”

I applaud FireScope’s continued innovation and challenge to the status quo. It’s things like this that are disruptive and will make everyone else improve. Some may feel the touch screen, PDA, iPhone, etc. interface are just “gimmicks”. In reality these are just the means to the more important things that are enabled by innovations such as this. The true value proposition is getting more people talking about how IT supports, aligns and impacts the business. Business Service Management (BSM) takes a huge leap forward when it starts to get as easy as touching a button to get insight into the bigger picture that each server or application plays in critical business service delivery.

Keep it up FireScope! What’s next?

I don’t know what’s cooler, that the President of FireScope went to the Van Halen concert or that he compared Business Service Management (BSM) to Van Halen’s innovative approach to going on the road with Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang.

What can I draw from this? I think that the next generation of BSM will require out-of-the box thinking and new innovative ways to address the challenges of IT and business alignment. The next generation of BSM will take a different approach. It will find a new way of doing the things that the incumbents continue to do. It will find the diamonds in the rough like making BSM easier to implement and maintain, quicker time to value and powerful visualizations that get the point across in less than 10 seconds.

BSM compared to Van Halen and the President of an emerging BSM company who made the analogy…priceless!

I’m always skeptical by what I see in a demo until I can dig into what’s under the covers, but what I saw in the Integrien Alive demo impressed me. It looks like what could be a solid foundation for Business Service Management (BSM) in the future with focus by Integrien in key areas such as dashboard visualization, modeling and alignment to business services and applications.

It looks like Integrien competes firmly with Netuitive and the former ProactiveNet (now BMC), maybe Firescope and Managed Objects to some degree.

Effective, trusted and value oriented Business Service Management absolutely depends on an accurate data stream whether it be events, metrics, KPIs, etc. Taking the default out of the box configurations and thresholds with your monitoring tools and poor monitoring and event management lifecycles has led to the development of solution such as Integrien’s to “take back control” and give you back a trusted insight into IT infrastructure.

I’d love to see or hear more about Integrien technology. Anyone have any first hand experience? IMO, we have a gap in the IBM Tivoli portfolio in this technology and capability area.

The Dashboard Spy has a nice profile on the dashboard / portal / reporting capabilities in the FireScope appliances.

It may be just me, but I continue to struggle with what a dashboard should look like. I see lots of screenshots these days that look more like reporting and portal type solutions packed with way too much information for easy consumption. I like a lot of the capabilities I see in the FireScope product, but I’d like to see some screenshots of what they feel are true Business Service Management dashboards for both an IT and LoB/non-IT audiences. What I see here is more in line with specifics for the IT Operations audience.