Remember those View-Master Stereoscopes when you were a kid? You could see a three-dimensional view of the Grand Canyon or Mickey Mouse that gave you more information than either two-dimensional view. Over the last two months we have laid out a path to IT performance management and made a case for two separate but equal views of performance: an infrastructure view (columns) and application view (rows). To achieve a complete IT performance picture, you need to develop both views and then integrate them into a "stereoscopic view" that constitutes business service management (BSM). And getting that view does not have to be hard, or break the bank.
Because it enables business-IT alignment, BSM is a sought after IT service Holy Grail. But you can't buy or legislate BSM - it is the outcome of assembling the essential pieces of IT management and using them effectively.
The IT management industry purports to deliver BSM in software which they say links business and technical information into a logical whole. These vendors - IBM, HP, CA, and BMC - sprinkle technical management functions with a few business logic rules and claim victory. But like the Holy Grail, BSM is elusive to them. Different views of IT remain largely separate, failing to provide a holistic view of actual business effectiveness. Furthermore, the added cost of these solutions starts at about $200,000!
We propose a simpler, less expensive road to BSM. First, focus on operational performance. You're probably saying, but there are many other aspects of IT like defining the correct project, writing proper software, staying on schedule, delivering within budget, defining an outsourcing strategy, etc. True, but all of these aspects are just preparations for the main event: ongoing operations. Management software vendors cannot help you build up operations - they apply BSM as an overlay after operational cutover. You build up your own operations.
Once the system is operating, the infrastructure and application performance management (IPM and APM) views are the aspects of BSM that really matter. Your infrastructure view tells you if things are working, and your application view tells you if users are getting their work done. By adding business objectives to the two views you can reach your BSM destination. It should not require a Herculean effort and it should not cost $200,000. We suggest building your own with BSM view with process rather than software.
In a nutshell, BSM is the integrated view of IPM and APM that provides the stereoscopic picture of how IT is supporting the business. Integrated IPM and APM sure looks like BSM without the complications and baggage accompanying what many vendors are selling. Of course there are products that focus on this key intersection of IT and make a bundle of money, but if you're smart, you don't have to go there - at least not right away.
NetForecast is an internationally recognized engineering consulting company that benchmarks, analyzes, and improves the performance of networked data, voice, and video applications.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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A Cheap and Easy Path to Business Service Management
A nice simple approach indeed. Can you share examples of how you've advised clients along this path? How have you helped them establish the very fundamental relationships between the IT components and the business services and applications they support or enable? Are you assuming that they have a CMDB or other source in place? If they do, how are you associating IPM and APM information to those configuration items?
Say hello to Peter for me! How's APDEX going?
Tks,
Doug
BSM/ITSM Blog: http://dougmcclure.net
A Cheap and Easy Path to Business Service Management
Yes, I certainly agree with Doug - this is a very interesting post and I think there are a lot of people besides Doug who would be eager for examples of companies that built their own BSM views with process rather than software.
The points raised around the importance of integration may be those most worth exploring. This is something we’ve been discussing at length over at Managed Objects’ blog. Might be worth a look for those who were interested by this article. The point we make there is that integration is the requisite step to consolidate the different views and provide a holistic service perspective. Being able to do that, regardless of which vendor’s management tools are already in your infrastructure, gets you a lot closer to that “holy grail.” Here’s a quick link.
http://www.wearebsm.com/managed_objects/2008/03/integration-simplifies-complex.html
There are tools...
Remember, there are tools at far less than $200k that provide both IPM and APM in a single product with a single (CM)DB behind. A few of these even allow users to define BSM views where specific weighted SLAs can be generated and business impact can be shown in case of an outage.
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