Category — IT Process Automation

Our fifth Netcool/Impact OPAL contribution!

Available here.

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Netcool/Impact can send notifications via email, instant messages, and paging (email based or CLI based). Netcool/Impact provides an effective way of notifying people about events occurring in your environment. The event can exist in Netcool/OMNIbus, other SQL based data sources, on a JMS bus, or it can sent via Web Services message. Impact can trigger a notification policy to run on receipt of an event in any of these sources. The notification policy can send a notification to a recipient identified in the event or it can find the recipient in an external data source.

Impact can also receive emails and instant messages. When a message is received, Impact can run a policy which parses the message and takes some action. A good example of using this functionality would be to have someone acknowledge receipt of a notification by forwarding the email to Impact, with the word acknowledged in the message body. Impact could parse that from the message and flag the event. In the same scenario, if the recipient has not acknowledged the notification within a specified time period, the event could be escalated by sending a notification to a backup contact, or the original contact supervisor.

Impact allows for a great deal of logic to be applied to notification scenarios. You can control who gets a notification, when they get it, how the message appears, what information is in the message, how to escalate, etc. Information related to the event that resides in other sources can be included in the message, saving the recipient a great deal of time. For example, providing a support phone number in a notification of a software issue could be of great benefit to someone in their car, on a train, or at lunch, without access to this information.

Our fourth Netcool/Impact OPAL contribution!

Available here.

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This integration will allow the Tivoli Enterprise Portal user to right-click on objects in the TEP and send data from those objects to Netcool/Impact for event enrichment, advanced data analysis and correlation, and for notifications and escalations.

The Tivoli Enterprise Portal object data is sent to Netcool/Impact via Web Services. Upon reception of the data from Tivoli Enterprise Portal, Netcool/Impact will run one or more Netcool/Impact policies. These policies make use of Netcool/Impacts wide array of Data Source Adapters and the Netcool/Impact Policy Language to perform event enrichment, advanced data analysis, and to perform notifications and escalations.

After the policy is finished, Netcool/Impact can write the results back to the Tivoli Enterprise Console Universal Message Console where the results can be viewed by support staff.

Get ITUP v2.1.3 FREE (with registration) if you want to learn about IBM’s Process Reference Model for IT (PRM-IT), ITIL, eTOM, CMMI, COBIT 4, etc., how to incorporate these best practices into your own operating environment, align your tools and technologies to these processes, and these exciting new features and content.

This is the ONLY place to get the IBM PRM-IT material that I know of!! Any ITSM practitioner needs to add this to their reference library!

• ITUP now includes the same level of content as ITUP Composer 2.1
• Added task level workflows for 17 PRM-IT processes
• Added the full documentation set for Process Reference Model for IT (PRM-IT) V2 - over 1000 pages of previously proprietary material
• Added the ITUPC style “fully clickable” workflow diagrams
• Upgraded to support the newly available Process Reference Model for IT (PRM-IT) V2
• Improved Asset Management and Data Management processes with improved workflows and updated tool mentors
• Minor changes to other processes, including: Availability, Capacity, Change, Compliance, Event, Release, Service Execution and Service Level Mgmt
• Added an introduction to ITIL V3
• Added support for COBIT V4.1
• High-level swimlane diagrams moved to the process description tabs, which now complement the ITUP Composer style workflow diagrams
• Updated the generic Service Desk tool mentors to Tivoli Service Desk mentors
• Added new tool mentors for MRO Asset and Incident Management, CAM for WebSphere and CICS PA, updated several others for currency
• Improved tool in-context linkage to OPAL for ease of use and added support for new sub-catalogs: Netcool, CCMDB, PMPs and Autonomic Computing

Wow! This looks really interesting and brings a wealth of potential for our ITSM portfolio. I see all kinds of gaps being addressed in our portfolio with this - Service Desk, Service Catalog, enhanced Discovery, enahnced Asset Management, enhanced SLA & SLA monitoring, etc.

Yes, re-read that - Service Desk & Service Catalogs! I look forward to seeing what develops here!

Some links to info - more to come I’m sure.

Acquisition PR

ITSM Solutions

Maximo Discovery

Maximo IT Asset Management (ITAM)

Maximo Service Desk

This week’s issue entitled “Change and Configuration Management Database: The Cornerstone of IT Process Improvement” is located here.

Past issues of interest include:

“The Greater Complexity of SOA Raises Issues that are quickly solved through ITSM”

“Gartner: IBM Tivoli leads in IT Operations Management”

The final product released last week in the ITSM portfolio is a significant enhancement and productization of the IBM Tivoli Unified Process (ITUP) tool now called the ITUP Composer v2.1 in this packaged release. The ITUP v2.0 tool will still be available for free as before. It does not include the ability to create, modify and publish processes and workflows. I still strongly recommend its use by anyone considering implementing any IT best practice such as ITIL, eTOM, COBIT, etc. in their environments.

Apart from what I’ve seen done from more pure play process and workflow modelling companies such as Casewise, I am not aware or any other Big4 or significant vendor offering a capability such as this. The sum of all of IBM’s powerful software group products are converging to make an extremely unique ITSM solutions portfolio and your IT processes come to life.

Here’s a snip on what’s in this productized release:

IBM Tivoli® Unified Process (ITUP) Composer V2.1 provides detailed documentation of IT Service Management processes based on industry best practices, enabling users to significantly improve their organization’s efficiency and effectiveness. ITUP Composer is the product version of the free IBM Tivoli Unified Process tool. ITUP Composer provides more detailed content and tooling to enable content customization, extension, and publishing.

The Tivoli Unified Process Composer comprises two main components: content and tools.

* Content — the customizable knowledge base describes in detail the following components and their relationships:
o Process — detailed descriptions and diagrams
o Work products — artifacts consumed and generated by processes
o Roles — describes responsibilities in detail enabling staff to work more effectively
o Tools — describes best practice uses of IBM tools for automation and execution
o Scenarios — describe common problems and best-practice solutions

* Tools — IBM Rational® Method Composer, a best-of-breed process authoring and publishing tool, enables users to:
o Extend or edit existing content
o Create new content
o Publish content as a website or PDF to document processes as a reference document for IT staff or auditing functions.

ITUP Composer V2.1 addresses all areas of IT Service Management, offering a quick start at understanding and building the optimal relationships among people, processes, information and technology in your organization. By enabling these components to work together, you can capture the full value of industry best practices to increase organizational efficiency and effectiveness, and improve governance and control.

Along with the release of the IBM Tivoli Change and Configuration Database (ITCCMDB) last week, the first three process managers were released. Here’s a sniplet on each of them and links to more information:

IBM Tivoli Availability Process Manager (ITAPM): Tivoli® Availability Process Manager (ITAPM) provides visibility into IT components, applications and their business impact. It provides IT organizations with the necessary tools to effectively diagnose and prioritize incidents and problems that impact mission-critical business services.

IBM Tivoli Release Process Manager (ITRPM): IBM Tivoli® Release Process Manager provides a process-based solution to address the domain of Release Management as defined by Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). IBM Tivoli Release Process Manager automates complex deployments in the context of your overall release management process, allowing you to assess impact on your IT infrastructure and business critical functions before you release.

IBM Tivoli Storage Process Manager (ITSPM): IBM Tivoli® Storage Process Manager provides you with a set of customizable ITIL-aligned storage management processes. It manages and coordinates simple and complex change, configuration and incident management processes for an IT storage environment.

There are many more process managers planned over the next year in addition to these. Keep an eye out!