IBM Global Services on rolled out its latest range of
services, intended to help users sketch out a blueprint for
streamlining their IT operations and increasing return on
investment.
The company's Infrastructure Management Assessment Services,
described as a "personal trainer" programme for datacentres, makes
datacentre specialists available to users who can help them craft a
customised "fitness" plan using tools from IBM's Project Symphony
portfolio.
One of the goals of the programme is to help users reclaim
investment monies from IT operations, to increase utilisation, and
to automate a range of different functions that users do
manually.
"Users typically run their infrastructure on a silo basis. They
will build a marketing system from the server on up, and then build
a manufacturing system from the server up and so on. As one of the
largest outsourcers and hosters around, we have a lot of
processes, tools, and best practices we can bring to bear to help
them integrate their environments," said Dev Mukherjee, vice
president of e-Business On Demand Strategy at IBM Global
Services.
Specifically, IBM will focus on five areas of the datacentre
including security, operations, change management, software
management, and services management. Once IBM makes its initial
assessment of a datacentre, it works with users to create a
"fitness plan" that tends to those areas that are most out of
shape.
"What we are trying to do is help users by doing an evaluation
of where they really are. And where most users really are is
dealing with a mix of hardware and software platforms and
datacentres. The initial workshop and the more detailed services
underneath give them a concrete plan for a heterogeneous
environment that they can execute themselves or ask us to help them
with," Mukherjee said.
To help users' IT operations become more efficient, the services
part of the programme helps them define their technical and
business requirements. This in turn enables them to deploy and use
their servers, storage, and networks more intelligently.
It can also help them decide on how to standardise their overall
computing environments and so prepare to integrate more
state-of-the-art technologies, including automated provisioning and
autonomic computing.
"I think we can help them transform their infrastructure to be
more efficient, but also to enable them to do new things too. This
is something that users have been asking for since we launched On
Demand last October," Mukherjee said.
Ed Scannell writes for InfoWorld