IBM has announced more than 30 new and upgraded systems management
products as the foundation of its automated and server
integration-friendly Business Impact Management strategy for Tivoli
Systems customers.
The latest portfolio is designed to help customers close the gap
between business process results and infrastructure management of
complex multivendor systems through a predictive-based model.
The approach will lend itself toward pinpointing and prioritising
potential problems surrounding application, server, or
network-level management before performance or IT operation is
affected, said Carl Kessler, vice-president of products, for the
Tivoli IBM Software Group.
Kessler signalled that IBM Tivoli Service Level Advisor (SLA) was
one of the most significant new products. The product offers
customers the capability to predict outages based on performance
analysis metrics and managed service levels.
"The real problems our customers face are much more [about]
predicting [issues]," Kessler said. "Most of the time it's the
mundane that keep things from working well. We can address
that."
Kessler said future versions of IBM Tivoli Service Level Advisor,
arriving as early as next year, should be able to plug into an
assortment of systems management platforms as well as Tivoli.
Another major product announcement from IBM is the IBM Tivoli
Enterprise Data Warehouse. Constructed to use DB2 technology, the
data warehouse solution is capable of archiving systems management
data from multiple vendors across a variety of domains.
Through consolidation of performance information across multiple
applications and business objectives, IBM Tivoli Enterprise Data
Warehouse is bringing Tivoli customers IBM's infrastructure and
data extraction strength to the product. This should bring
stability to traditionally complex management, said analyst Audrey
Rasmussen, vice-president of Enterprise Management
Associates.
"If you have multiple management products deployed, often they have
their own databases. Often the nuggets are scattered all over the
infrastructure," Rasmussen said.
"Now if it's pulled into the data warehouse, there are
opportunities for users to go through and look at trends and have
better co-ordination of management data coming from a lot of
disparaged sources."
By embedding Tivoli technology inside IBM's WebSphere application
server, Rasmussen said, customers can expect a breadth and depth of
management and information other end-users will be forced to gather
through application plug-ins.
"It's nice to see [IBM] pulling the infrastructure and management
pieces to provide more value for Tivoli clients," she added.
Other IBM product announcements include:
- IBM Directory Server 4.1. Based on Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol (LDAP), the product enables identification of users and
resources across an enterprise. The directory server will be
shipped free in Tivoli solution offerings.
- IBM Tivoli Switch Analyser. Features auto-discovery and
population of all network layer-2 switches.
- IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console Integration with NetView.
Combined to form advanced multilayer root-cause analysis and event
correlation automation.
- IBM Tivoli Privacy Wizard. Available for free download, the
wizard produces and manages a platform-agnostic, automated
XML-version of an organisation's privacy policy for various data
types.
- IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 5.1. Improved performance, expanded
storage device/library, and platform support for Windows, Sun
Solaris, Novell NetWare, Macintosh, HP-UX, and IBM AIX.
IBM has also simplified and repackaged Tivoli product family suites
to consolidate and offer multiple CDs and integrated technology for
customers.