IBM has unveiled new systems management software to help
customers automate and standardise the way they design and
integrate IT processes across separate departments.
The aim is to allow organisations to design IT processes once
and automate their integration across all areas of operation,
rather than manually designing processes for each department.
Built on IBM's Tivoli, Rational, WebSphere and DB2 middleware,
the products include "tool mentors" that help implement actions
prescribed by the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a widely used
industry guide of best practice.
The new solutions include IBM Tivoli Unified Process, a
navigational tool to provide the "how-to" for customising and
implementing best practice for mapping, modifying and improving IT
processes.
There is also IBM Tivoli Change and Configuration Management
Database - a virtualised database that federates IT information
spread across multiple databases.
The database provides a single view of an application running on
multiple servers, so IT staffers can make better decisions, such as
administering passwords giving the right people access to the right
systems.
IBM Tivoli Process Managers is pre-packaged automation software
for IT processes such as co-ordinating application deployment
across software, hardware, storage and network technologies. These
products can be customised to serve a particular industry, such as
healthcare or retail.
Analyst Gartner said many IT organisations would shift their
focus this year from traditional cost-cutting techniques to process
improvement, a measure that would not only affect IT costs but also
IT performance.
The analyst forecast that by the end of this year 20% of large
IT organisations would rely on IT process improvements to lower
operational costs by 10%, with the figure rising to as much as 40%
of large IT organisations by the end of 2007.