The
IBM Tivoli suite
of products is a pretty broad church. The range of functions it
can manage varies from monitoring and discovery of assets to
business service management (BSM), which links business services
and organisational value.
"Over the past few years we've been translating the model from
systems management to service management," says Mark Fieldhouse,
strategy manager for IBM Tivoli.
In this respect, IBM could be accused of aping
BMC's positioning - putting process over technology - but it
includes some advanced event-management features.
The challenge it faces is in meeting the demand for IT
governance. It is working on a better link between a project and
portfolio management capability, a level of integration which is a
fundamental characteristic of IT governance. This is itself only
significant because IBM has made such a key priority of IT
governance, because it allows the company to build on its product
and consultancy offerings.
Witness IBM's statements about its commitment to its governance
and risk management strategy. Analysts say they expect further
progress in the coming months.
IBM Tivoli needed to offer greater flexibility in the IT
workforce. This was a pre-requisite to CIOs to being able to bring
about major benefits for their companies, by redeploying resources
to the more productive, value-adding activities.
"IBM Tivoli provides a comprehensive product but it's easy to
use," says Roy Illsley, senior researcher at analyst
The Butler Group.
"It is properly integrated at the data layer, not just a veneer on
top of existing management tools."
This level of integration is essential for any enterprise-wide
tool set, says illsley. "As long as third-party tools can also be
integrated at this level
IBM's Universal Agent (UA) provides this capability," he
says.
IBM Tivoli has, like many large vendors' products in this
market, tried to follow the best practice guidelines of
ITIL. But on the other hand, when IBM is in a more expansive
mode, it has created a far-reaching set to tools. Its integrated
suite of products can cover the entire spectrum of
ITSM. This enables IBM Tivoli to provide an all-encompassing,
single role-based portal approach to the user interface. The upshot
of this is that all of this information can be made available to
all the relevant people.
The link to BSM is a significant capability in any systems
management tool, says Illsley. In particular the configuration of
business rules that can drive a fully automated response.
It might, for example, work on the basis of predictive analysis
of the systems to invoke a security or backup response. This would
completely transform the IT support function from a reactive
response unit to a proactive added-value unit.
One of the downsides of this technology is that these advanced,
predictive capabilities are only possible for certain event types.
Additionally, they require the supporting technology for
implementation. However, analysts say that as IBM builds on the
potential capabilities of its IBM Tivoli product range, these
automatic, predictive responses will be the foundations of an
impressive value proposition. Businesses will be able to see where
they can expect their return on investment, and it won't be
difficult to visualise the scale.
IBM has one important differentiator, say analysts. The IBM
Tivoli unified process (ITUP) product is a point of difference
between IBM and its competitors, says Butler's Illsley, because it
provides a tool that helps managers to define processes. This tool
and these processes can be based on any number of standard
frameworks, from control objectives for information and related
technology
(CoBIT), to ITIL,
Six Sigma or
any others.
Butler Group's Illsley thinks this is in line with what CIOs
have been telling him. IBM has delivered a suite of products that
provide most of the tools the market wants today, he says. But
there is still scope for improvement.
How does IBM compare to the competition though? Other vendors
have developed products along similar lines. However, differences
are in the detail. These depend on the range of capabilities
offered and these in turn hinge on a vendor's ability to integrate
them with business processes. This is where IBM has an advantage,
as its service capabilities have blessed it with the ability to
shape technology around business processes, and not the other way
around.
The vendor's ability to implement the solutions in a modular
format, which can then work the third-party tools that the end user
may already have invested in, is a major strength
"IBM Tivoli is one of the best tools on the market for anyone
needing comprehensive feature sets keeping control of a complex IT
infrastructure," says Illsley.
IBM was canny in recognising this shift at an early stage. It
started converting its Tivoli product range from the previous
architectural framework towards this Web-enabled delivery
mechanism. Who would have thought IBM would triumph at a
competition to provide open systems?
If there is a criticism, it is that understanding the individual
product capabilities is not easy. Particularly if they were
optional add-ons. Overall, though, analysts say IBM Tivoli is an
excellent product with features that other competitor products
lack.
Vital statistics
- Main products: Tivoli, ITUP
- Major customers: Coca Cola, Barclays, British
Airways
- Market share: 25%
- Annual revenue: $7.7 bn
- Number of staff: 12,000 worldwide
- Licence fee: Not disclosed
- Butler Group/Datamonitor Financial rating:
9.64