Is it asset management or inventory management? Configuration management or change management? Service-level management or business impact management?

	Never-fail business services Ask this of business impact management software vendors

Often in the high-tech industry, users must dissect the language used to describe a product before they can determine if they want the technology. Aligning IT with business objectives to better manage application performance is the latest trend for network management vendors. New products from vendors such as BMC Software, Managed Objects and Micromuse claim to manage service levels across multiple network elements, databases and servers to keep application performance on track.

With all the talk of service levels, users could think new BIM tools might just be old SLM products repackaged with a trendy new name. But industry watchers say otherwise.

"BIM could be considered an evolution of sorts," says Glenn O'Donnell, research director at Meta Group.

BIM tools are an extension of SLM software in that they look to ensure services are delivered accurately and efficiently. The driving force behind the BIM buzz, he adds, is the trend to focus on business objectives.

"The demand for these products exists right now because IT organizations are more strongly being forced to demonstrate their value to the business," O'Donnell says. "These products can offer good visibility to help network managers understand business-related issues."

And, a fundamental difference exists between SLM and BIM offerings.

"SLM is a verification that a service is delivered the way it's predefined to be delivered, and that's typically very IT-oriented," says Jean-Pierre Garbani, a research director with Giga Information Group. He says the rules and thresholds written for SLM software use technology terms such as network latency and server response time. Whereas BIM software requires IT staff to configure the technology based on business objectives.

For example, if a top company executive wants the e-commerce page to respond to an end-user request within 2 seconds, the network staff has to determine how to configure all the devices and applications that touch that business service to guarantee that response time. Many tools of the past could guarantee servers stay available 99.99% of the time, but meeting one metric cannot guarantee a Web page will deliver its content within 2 seconds.

SLM software can track the availability of, say, a network switch, a Web server, an application server and a database. But even if each element delivers on its 99.99% availability, the network may not meet service-level agreements (SLA) requiring 99.99% uptime. When users aggregate the performance data, such as response time, availability and network latency, and add the metrics from the four separate elements, the actual availability of all the components working as one unit might fall below the SLA measure.

Today's BIM tools aim to aggregate the performance data in real time and prevent service levels from dropping before end users can be affected. Many of the new software offerings include modeling technology that lets network managers group the network devices, application and Web servers, and databases that a business service requires as one managed unit. The software can pinpoint where in that unit a performance degradation has occurred and let network managers know what users and business-critical processes will be affected.

"The industry is moving to a model of service assurance," Garbani says. "All these disparate service levels must be aggregated in real time."