Tivoli's take on SOA

Tivoli, IBM's management software arm, last week said it would soon offer software that will let customers manage service-oriented architecture -based applications. Alfred Zollar, general manager at Tivoli software, sat down at the Share user conference in Boston with Network World Senior Editor Denise Dubie to discuss how the company plans to help customers manage and optimize performance of this emerging technology area.

At what stage of adoption would you say IBM customers are at with SOA?

I think it's still somewhat early. But I believe this will be one of the most-rapid adoption curves we'll get a chance to see in the industry. I say that because when I come to events like this I always poll customers, and the number of hands increasing seems to be increasing much faster than we have recognized in the past. My own personal research with customers says to me that customers are really moving very fast down the adoption curve.

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Tivoli, IBM's management software arm, last week said it would soon offer software that will let customers manage service-oriented architecture -based applications. Alfred Zollar, general manager at Tivoli software, sat down at the Share user conference in Boston with Network World Senior Editor Denise Dubie to discuss how the company plans to help customers manage and optimize performance of this emerging technology area.

At what stage of adoption would you say IBM customers are at with SOA?

I think it's still somewhat early. But I believe this will be one of the most-rapid adoption curves we'll get a chance to see in the industry. I say that because when I come to events like this I always poll customers, and the number of hands increasing seems to be increasing much faster than we have recognized in the past. My own personal research with customers says to me that customers are really moving very fast down the adoption curve.

What are you hearing from customers about what they need in management products for SOA?

They need the ability to visualize performance and availability at one console. With our portal, we will provide that. They also need the ability to understand how to mediate message traffic, so we are investing in those capabilities around the various service environments such as WebSphere.

How do you plan to address security in reference to SOA?

Obviously with all these different services re-used across different organizational borders it would be a nightmare to maintain user IDs and passwords for every user of every service. The ability to do that in a federated way with our [Tivoli] Federated Identity Manager solution is a big part of this as well.

The IBM Tivoli Composite Application Management (ITCAM) for SOA product demonstration showed that IBM used technology it acquired from Candle [April 2004] and Cyanea in its development. Could you explain how?

There is some use of Candle technology in the enterprise portal in the SOA solution we plan to have, but it has mostly been organically built. But Candle has allowed us to move more quickly with our Tivoli monitoring solutions, and provided us the ability to integrate everything around the Tivoli Enterprise Portal. It's really those off-mainframe technologies that have allowed us to be so successful in integrating Omegamon with existing Tivoli capabilities.

And Cyanea?

The Composite Application Management suite of products that we've got is really where the Cyanea capabilities come into play. They have given us tremendous abilities to go deep into an application model, to be able to isolate and diagnose that one application server component is in need of greater help, for example. The Cyanea capabilities allowed us to go deep into models like [Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition] and integrate that nicely with the Tivoli Enterprise Portal, along with all the other Tivoli availability and management capabilities that we've got.

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Why is Tivoli continuing to invest in mainframe management technologies when competitors have begged off?

It's all about customers. If you look at large enterprises and what they are trying to do, most of them are trying to deploy business services that are based on a composite application topology that includes a mainframe. It's understandable why HP would say they are not investing because they don't have skills, they don't really understand the environment, and other competitors have typically viewed it as a cash cow and not as a source of renewable investment. We've taken a decidedly different approach because of the role that the mainframe plays as in many cases a very critical asset in an overall composite application management environment.

What management challenges are specific to the mainframe?

It is a mature environment. As an IT infrastructure, the mainframe has been around for 40 years. There are many capabilities that have reached the level of maturity that requires you to integrate with them based on the way they operate. The security model on the mainframe would be a great example of that. We are working with Vanguard with a reseller agreement to essentially allow their skills and knowledge around mainframe security models with RACF to be a part of the overall end-to-end picture we bring with Tivoli. We think the phrase "end-to-end" is often overused but what it really means is everything that the customer has. It's not about deciding on technology based on our priorities or other technology limitations that we might face that things the customers have don't matter. And that's what I see our competitors doing.

How is IBM putting its Isogon acquisition to use on the mainframe?

Software asset management is really what the Isogon capabilities are about. The product is SoftAudit, we had a reseller agreement with them and we have done enough work with them to conclude that the marrying of their mainframe management capabilities with SoftAudit and our Tivoli License Manager would provide the capabilities of a single user interface for our customers so they could manage all of their software in a single way, with a single set of contract compliance process and methodologies. Again, it's yet another demonstration of this real end-to-end notion that we've got. We're shipping new releases all the time and the products are already integrated, they have been integrated since we began our reseller agreement.

Is technology from Candle being used to manage mainframes?

We are leveraging a lot of the great technology we picked up with the Candle acquisition. Obviously people knew the Candle, specifically the Omegamon, technology, was a great set of capabilities on the mainframe. What most people didn't appreciate was the amount of great technology that really applied to other platforms.

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