***Apparently, there are some “business issues” between IBM Tivoli and BMC Software that we’re attempting to work through. Our hopes are that this will enable broader based support, integration, version concurrency, etc. I’d strongly encourage you to voice your opinions and needs to your IBM Tivoli and BMC Software sales and product managers so they understand how important these topics may be to your business.
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Update 11/29/11: Look for IBM/Tivoli to lead the way in the industry to make use of OSLC as a new integration framework. For more information on OSLC, visit http://open-services.net/.
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I see a lot of search requests looking for this type of information. I’ll jot down things I’ve done, know are possible or other ideas on this topic. Feel free to add your own or ask for help in anything here or related.
Netcool OMNIbus and BMC Remedy Help Desk Integration
I strongly encourage you to visit BMC’s BMC Development Network (BMCDN) site for access to some very good content, documentation, best practices, integrations, etc. Visit the BMCDN now.
This is the tried and true Bi-directional trouble ticket gateway integration using the ARS API. IIRC, this is supported up to ARS 6.3. As long as ARS hasn’t changed, I don’t know why it wouldn’t work with newer versions.
** Updated 11/29/11: The Netcool/OMNIbus ARS Gateway supports BMC Remedy versions .7.0 , 7.1, 7.5 & 7.6. For the most accurate information on supported versions, visit here.
Keys here to think about are not just about opening and updating trouble tickets in Remedy Help Desk. Think about populating those tickets with any of the information contained in your events. If you’re doing any event enrichment with Netcool/Impact, you can include that same information in the trouble tickets.
Think about the various scenarios for how events and tickets update, clear and resolve. You’ll want to capture this information in both the ticket and event for future problem management type reporting (ie did the ticket close because of operator involvement or because the event cleared, etc.).
Roll your own
ARS Perl
Direct ODBC
Webservices/SOAP
Impact Policies that interact with the ARS API or database
Right Click Tool + Script Execution
Netcool/Impact WebServices
This is a WebServices based integration using Netcool/OMNIbus and Netcool/Impact to integrate with Tivoli’s new Service Desk (TSRM). There may be some applicable approach, code, IPL, etc. that you can use to create a similar integration using Netcool/Impact and the WebServices API’s with Remedy ARS.
Netcool/Impact to Maximo Service Request Manager (TSRM) v6.2 Integration using WebServices
This OPAL publication provides detailed instructions, custom code and a practical example for integrating Tivoli Netcool/Impact with Maximo Service Desk via Web Services. The result is bi-directional communication between the two products.
BMC Atrium CMDB
I strongly encourage you to visit BMC’s BMC Development Network (BMCDN) site for access to some very good content, documentation, best practices, integrations, etc. Visit the BMCDN now.
It looks like this is the new direction for integration: Atrium Integration Engine.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing formal here. Your integration here will have to be a roll your own approach. The BMC Atrium CMDB has a well documented C and Java APIs.
Class Manager API: This API is used to create, delete, and modify classes and relationships. Some of the CMDB requirements allow a class to map into more than one class, inherit information from other classes, and also perform recursive queries using the data of previous queries. The Class Manager C API API contains data structures that store both simple
and complex information.
Graph Query API: This API allows for programmatic manipulation of class and instance data. Included in this API are a graph query function that lets you “walk†the graph of configuration items (CIs) and relationships in the CMDB, starting with a specified CI and following its relationships to other CIs and continuing along the graph for as many levels as you want.
The use of the create/delete, export/import and graph query API calls would be the most useful for many of the integrations between Netcool and BMC Atrium CMDB. For example, one of the uses of the export and/or graph query API calls could be to integrate the BMC Atrium CMDB information into the Netcool/RAD service models and topologies. Simple instance retreivals would be useful for Netcool/Impact policy queries for acting upon events (enrich, supress, etc.).
You should be able to ask your Remedy team for the API documents related to BMC Remedy API and Atrium CMDB APIs. If you can’t find them, ask me.