Category — Monthly Wrap Up

I’ve been on the road for the better part of June attending our annual Tivoli Technical Education Exchange (TTEE) in Austin and starting a new global project with a Fortune 10 client for what’s likely to be one of Tivoli’s largest BSM/BPM/BAM deployments based on TBSM v4.1.1 ever.

I did managed to squeak a few posts out this past month. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking around the emerging area of predictive/proactive analytics tools such as those from Integrien, Netuitive and the former ProactiveNet (now BMC).

While I still think each must be more transparent with their secret sauce of what’s really happening so practitioners (not PHDs) understand it, I’m really more interested in the business case and buy decisions a potential client has for this investment (and how this is related to what clients aren’t doing in their monitoring environment or how us vendors are letting clients down). I’m also extremely interested in how clients expect to operationalize the solutions and implement the organizational changes required to move from a reactive to a proactive/predictive organization.

Hot Posts for June

In Top 5 Reasons for a Predictive/Proactive Solution I take a whack at what the drivers are for making an investment in these solutions. Please share your thoughts!

In Does a Proactive/Predictive Tool make for a “Proactive/Predictive” Organization? I ask some pointed questions to better understand and shape the discussion to areas I see more need. There is significant organizational transformation needed to reap the benefits of this technology (which was validated by at least one Netuitive customer in the comments). Please share your thoughts!

In What Business Service Management means to IBM Tivoli, what may be an unprecedented first for IBM Tivoli (at least that I know of), this detailed discussion on what Business Service Management means to Tivoli and the strategic and tactical directions the BSM solution will take over time is detailed. I’d love to see any of the other vendors (or IBM Tivoli PMs) open up with this kind of transparency. I hope that this raises the bar in the Business Service Management market and helps others CLEARLY evaluate vendors in an apples to apples way. (I hope to facilitate that more soon.)

In the “What’s BSM All About” Category

I’ve had the opportunity to speak with an emerging vendor named StackSafe of which I think every monitoring tools group should be looking at to help support their development, testing and release process. Denny Powell and I chatted about some of the leading Business and IT Service Management topics earlier this month in Doug McClure Tells a BSM Story”. Our conversation continues in Doug McClure Thoughts on BSM, ITSM and Change/Release Management. I encourage you to check out what StackSafe is up to.

Tivoli Business Service Manger (TBSM) Posts

We launched another interim fix for TBSM v4.1.1 here but it was quickly identified as having bugs when applied to a TBSM v4.1.1 deployment with failover. The symptoms I saw was the secondary TBSM server never started up. A new release has not been made available yet.

On the To-Do List for July

What else - WYNTK on TBSM Design Patterns…hopefully.
Collect more “BSM Defined Project” input. If you’re willing, share what BSM means to you & your company!

Hot Posts for May

In “The Realities of the BSM Challenge” I shared my comments on the Michael Biddick article on the BSM space. Still no response from Michael and comments I made on his follow up apparently were not approved? I’d like to see folks like Michael and the Windward team share their thoughts and ideas on how to be successful with BSM with their vendor agnostic background and focus. Maybe the article series Michael publishes could focus on this as well.

This led right into many discussions on what can and should be done to make BSM easier. In “The World Needs BSM Lite”, Peter and the Net Forecast team share their thoughts on what this “BSM Lite” may be. I follow suit in “In Search of BSM Lite”. Peter and the Net Forecast team spoke with me to understand some of my thoughts and ideas which they captured here in “Thoughts on Implementing BSM “Lite”: Interview with Doug McClure.

Compuware 2.0 was finally launched and I actually got a couple Compuware employees to join the conversation about where they’re headed and how BSM may evolve under their “2.0″ moniker.

The FireScope team’s much anticipated countdown to a new focus for making BSM easier and achievable for the masses was uncovered this month as FireScope BSM Business Edition (BE). This firmly establishes FireScope as a BSM player in the SMB and enterprise space as an easier to deploy, cost effective alternative to the incumbent “Big 4″ companies. I’ll share more on this soon.

Quest Software’s Foglight team has established a Foglight Community and has many Product Managers blogging. I’m pleased to welcome Tyler and Greg to the conversation and look forward to their transparency and innovation in the BSM space!

IBM Tivoli’s inaugural converged user’s conference called Pulse took place in Orlando this month. I’ve shared my thoughts here. The presentation and audio from my TBSM session is available here. Stay tuned for more BSM oriented sessions and audio.

Tivoli Business Service Manager (TBSM) Posts

TBSM v4.1 Interim Fix 11 was released this month.

On the To-Do List for June

More Pulse presentations and audio on the blog.
WYNTK on TBSM Design Patterns (finally)

The month of March involved my business trip to China to learn about and work with our top banking clients and consult with them on moving towards a business aligned, top down service management architecture across each of their rapidly growing IT environments. Business Service Management (BSM) is extremely immature in China the best that I can tell and China represents a significant opportunity for vendors to gain market share within IT environments that appear to be free from some of the complexities challenging similar companies in the USA. Postings were fewer this month, but I managed to fire off a few highlighted below.

Hot Posts for March

I continue in my never ending quest for helping the traditional “tools group” or TBSM administrator to get outside their comfort zone and work on something that can position TBSM as providing value in other ways. In Seven Steps to Become a BSM Super Hero I offer a simple way that the TBSM administrator can approach the broader IT organization and create a value added solution that can position the capabilities of TBSM differently.

One of the resounding thoughts throughout my time in China was around what I’m calling “China-Scale”. This is a rambling post on thoughts about what the industry must begin thinking about to prepare for “China-Scale” and the hyper-growth happening here. In a similar thread, all of the companies in China are frantically preparing for the Olympics. They are rushing to make IT investments and deployments to ensure that the image of China is protected at all costs this year. Will they be ready?

Tivoli Business Service Manager (TBSM) Posts

Everyone who purchases the TBSM product has visions of modeling services within their environments. Some never get there. Continuing the TBSM Design Patterns series, I introduce patterns related to modeling services, sub-services and functional areas within your environment.

On the To-Do List for April

When is a solution really a solution?
Summarizing the Opportunities in China
In Search of Transaction Management and Monitoring
What’s up with Batch Job Management?
DevCampTivoli Planning
The Next Generation of Business Service Management
Hey! You got your monitoring in my RIA!
More WYNTK on TBSM Design Patterns

Hot Posts for February

It was Super Bowl season at the beginning of the month when I posted The Super Bowl of Business Service Management where I shared thoughts on what you may want to consider when evaluating solutions within the Business Service Management space.

My head has been in the clouds a lot this month listening to all the discussion on John Willis’s blog and the IT Management Guys podcasts focused on virtualization and cloud computing. My thoughts on where Business Service Management may fit into all of this are shared in If you think Business Service Management is “pie in the sky”, consider this.

With great pleasure, I’ve started my SME Guest Author program on my blog. In this post, I introduce the first SME Guest Author Steve Henning of Integrien.

Steve wastes no time and joins in the conversation with his first post Why Real Time Analytics?

DevCampTivoli Thought Provoking Series

I’m still seeking outside of the box thinking on how to create easily repeatable end-to-end Business Service Management solutions within the IBM Tivoli portfolio. I share more of my thoughts in the post In Search of a BSM Situation and BSM Event from ITM 6.x.

Industry Highlights

I’m still looking for Netuitive to join in the conversation and share more details about their technology and products. I’ve started to dig in more where I can, but many questions remain unanswered. Netuitive, I do not really desire to speak with your CEO, but prefer that your SME’s join in the conversation. My thoughts shared here in A deeper look at Netuitive.

End user experience and performance monitoring is a key component of a mature Business Service Management solution. I attended a webinar by start up Aternity and took some time to gather insight into the end user experience and performance monitoring segment in Aternity and the End User Experience Monitoring Space.

Long time incumbent in the Business Service Management space joined in the discussion this month with the launch of their own “sexy” blog. I share my warm welcome and thoughts in Managed Objects joins the BSM Conversation. Now where is everyone else?

Tivoli Business Service Manager Posts

One of the powerful features within the Tivoli Business Service Manager product are the real time scorecarding capabilities. I share some insight and links to a nice OPAL contribution for TBSM in Tivoli Business Service Manager v4.x Scorecard Customization.

TBSM v4.x Performance Tuning White Paper available here.

The TBSM and TADDM integration story is one of our strongest value propositions. However, it is an integration that currently does take some effort to get working well within a client’s environment. I share some resources in Customizing Tivoli Business Service Manager v4.x and TADDM Integration.

On the To-Do List for March

I’m heading to Shanghai, China this weekend for the next three weeks. I’ll be helping one of the largest financial institutions in the world with creation of a Business Service Management strategy and solution. My thoughts this month may tend to be focused on how Business Service Management is received in the Asia Pacific region. I think there is tremendous opportunity in this region for clients to adopt the tenants of Business Service Management now so as they experience rapid gowth, future rework is minimized.

My airplane and hotel time will probably allow me to think and post in these areas as well:

• The Next Generation of Business Service Management
• Hey! You got your monitoring in my RIA!
• More WYNTK on TBSM Design Patterns
• More in the DevCampTivoli Thought Provoking Series

What do you want to hear about?

I think Ryan’s monthly wrap up posts are really nice and I’m going to start these as well.

Hot Posts for January

In Where is Quest Software’s BSM Play? I ask what’s taking Quest Software so long to roll out a new BSM story based on their Magnum Technologies acquisition. Lots of good comments here from Quest Software clients who have had both success and challenges with Foglight. Quest Software’s Foglight Product Manager chimes in for some commentary! Don’t be a stranger Brad!

In Will Compuware 2.0 Include a Clear BSM Story and Viable Solution? I question if Compuware can really reinvent itself and compete in the BSM space. Still no response here from Compuware. Where’s the 2.0?

In So You Want to do BSM? and several articles that EMA has put out in the trade rags this month highlighting the results of their BSM/SLM Market Forecast for 2008-2012 they have painted a bright future for Business Service Management. They also are emphasizing the challenges with the traditional ways of implementing it, something that I’m in complete agreement with and have been dealing with for years. Still looking for a final version of this market forcast report. More here and here.

DevCampTivoli Thought Provoking Series

In Is Your Tivoli Monitoring, Netcool/OMNIbus or TBSM Organization Structure a Barrier to BSM Success? to propose new approaches for IT organization structure to focus on end-to-end service management ownership.

In My ITM 6.x BSM Profile should include a BSM Descriptor File I propose an approach for every managed system to provide key information needed for BSM.

In All I want for the New Year is a BSM Profile for ITM 6.x I propose a concept for specific and purpose built instrumentation of managed systems using a BSM Profile.

WYNTK on TBSM Series

In WYNTK on TBSM Design Patterns: Architectural Model for COTS and Composite Applications I introduce TBSM design patterns for modeling COTS and Composite Applications.

Industry Highlights

BarCampESM was a success. Check out the OMC site for all the follow on activity and blip.tv for all the sessions. My presentation and video are available here. Take 30 minutes and watch the video. Let me know what you think? Am I way out in left field here? Too passionate?

Digital Fuel issued a couple PR’s announcing some impressive wins within very large telecommunications companies. Me thinks they’re ripe for an acquisition.

I’ve started to watch a bunch of new vendors this month. These all fit into various niche areas of the management and monitoring space and are very critical to a maturing Business Service Management deployment. True value oriented and powerful BSM can’t be done without capabilities offered by vendors such as these.

Integrien looks like the newest player in this “monitoring analytics” area. Netuitive and the former ProactiveNet (BMC) also play in this area. Integrien released version 6.0 of their product and apparently has addressed some of their scalability challenges. I was very impressed with what I saw in terms of their presentation layer, but haven’t seen much other than that. Steve Henning (VP Products, Integrien and ex-IBM Tivoli Security guy) joins the conversation and shares some insight as do many others who are very familiar with all three vendors in this space. I’ve invited Steve to guest author on the blog so maybe we can get some more insight into this much needed space!

I’ve always been pretty close to the user experience, user performance, synthetic/real-user monitoring segment. Three new vendors crossed my wires this month to join the others I’m pretty keen on (Keynote, Gomez, Tealeaf, Coradiant, IBM, HP, Quest, Compuware). Mature BSM deployments absolutely depend on the perspectives that vendors like this provide. It’s absolutely required for successful BSM and is the “glue” that joins the end-to-end service delivery chain together as the end user sees it.

Check out Knoa Software, Symphoniq and Aternity. If you have any information or experience with these vendors, I’d love to hear about it!

Almost as important to knowing how critical business services and applications are performing from the end user perspective, trying to really understand in instrument the ultra-critical transactions flowing across end-to-end services and applications is a sign of a very mature BSM deployment. In Two to Watch in Transaction Management and Monitoring Space” I call out Correlix and Correlsense as two that should be considered. I’m also looking for anyone with personal experience or information on these vendors and their technology. Correlsense’s CTO/Founder is an ex-IBMer and has a great start to a blog with teeth!

On the To-Do List for February

• The Next Generation of Business Service Management
• Hey! You got your monitoring in my RIA!
• New IBM Tivoli developerWorks collaboration sites
• More WYNTK on TBSM Design Patterns
• More in the DevCampTivoli Thought Provoking Series

What do you want to hear about?