IBM is blending its Tivoli management software and
autonomic technology to enable businesses to adapt to changing
conditions.
At the Planet Tivoli conference yesterday, IBM's Robert LeBlanc,
general manager of Tivoli Software, said the combination of its
Tivoli platform and autonomic computing for self-managing systems
will help businesses to manage IT proactively.
He also pointed out that IBM is moving its directory products to
the Tivoli division and is unveiling the Tivoli Autonomic
Monitoring Engine. This will enable independent software companies
to embed autonomic capabilities in their applications in addition
to being part of the IBM Tivoli Monitoring 5.1 product. The
software is designed to provide self-managing capabilities.
LeBlanc said the days are over when there was plenty of time to
adapt systems to change; new services must be provided quickly. "If
you have a website and all of sudden you have a spike in traffic,
you have to respond in real time," he said. "You've got to bring
variability into IT systems."
Chief information officers, he said, must balance infrastructure
needs and costs and maximise resources such as storage utilisation.
"Bridging between IT and business is becoming critical."
IBM's autonomic computing strategy provides predictability, he
said. "It's all about moving from this reactive mode that we're in
to being more predictive and proactive."
With the new Tivoli Business Manager product, for example,
problems are resolved in an autonomic fashion. Additionally, the
Tivoli Service Level Advisor shows when an application is
approaching service-level agreement breach.
IBM is also integrating products such as the Tivoli ID Manager,
Access Manager with IBM WebSphere Portal. Portal technology,
LeBlanc said, increases challenges in front-end interaction and
raises issues as to what must get through a firewall.