Oblicore puts a price on poor IT performance

Service management software maker Oblicore this week announced it had updated its flagship product to now help customers understand the business and financial impact of poor IT performance.

Guarantee 4.0, software that tracks IT performance against pre-defined service-level agreements (SLA), now features a financial management module that company executives say can help customers measure how well the IT components perform against how much they cost the business. The financial information also helps IT managers analyze how services they deliver are consumed by the end-user community and better plan for future consumption, Oblicore says. Metrics include service delivery total price, unit price list and incentives models, which Oblicore says will enable IT managers to "comprehensively track revenue generated from delivered services."

"We've included the ability with our business impact analysis for customers to drill down through a red service alert and quickly see which services are slow and which customers are affected," says Bernd Leger, vice president of marketing. He says the software now includes a Service Delivery Navigator, which lets IT managers describe the relationships among services, customers and the underlying IT infrastructure to more quickly find the source of problems or the customers most impacted during performance degradations.

Oblicore Guarantee software collects IT data and correlates it with pre-defined SLA and business objectives. Guarantee uses software agents to collect data from management systems such as HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli with information gathered by helpdesk tools from companies such as Remedy and Peregrine. The data is then sent to a correlation engine that compares the IT performance metrics against pre-set SLAs, which network managers can administer via a user interface.

Also new in Version 4.0 is Guarantee's Service Delivery Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which the company says will help customers model configuration information attributes including location, cost and usage information. Oblicore also added usability enhancements such as a redesigned user interface and a menu of role-based tools and wizards to simplify deployment and maintenance. Oblicore also says this version offers built-in Web services that will make it easier for IT managers implementing service-oriented architecture (SOA) environments to integrate Guarantee with corporate portals.

Oblicore competes with management heavyweights such as BMC, CA and HP, as well as Promixa Technology, which was recently acquired by Compuware for its business impact analysis and business service management capabilities.

Oblicore Guarantee 4.0 pricing starts at $250,000.