Tivoli intends to blend management and help desk services

Tivoli Systems used its recent Planet Tivoli user conference to disclose its plans to implement in future products a level of integration that had been available only on an a la carte basis. That integration unites the services of the base system and network management platform (Tivoli's TME 10) with the workflow management provided by current generation help desk products.

One example of this current product generation is Software Artistry's EnterpriseSA Expert product family, acquired by Tivoli as part of its buyout of Software Artistry in January. Tivoli's long-term approach is to turn the classic help desk into a service desk that can deliver proactive and reactive support services. That integrated product is called Tivoli Service Desk. Its eventual objective is to offer a more cohesive set of functions that integrate a core set of management services. These services include base system and network management, help desk workflow management and configuration, and fault management automation functions that are supported by network distributed end system agents.

Currently, these agents are packaged as part of Tivoli's Distributed Monitoring Applications, but they are likely to be broken out later as they become more functional and add greater management value. The emphasis on agent-based functionality is similar in scope to Novell's recent announcement of its ZENworks product family; it stems from what standards-based SNMP, RMON and DMTF services lack in providing the full functionality required for managing production service levels. It's also likely that Tivoli will evolve its management system into agent interaction to support the next generation of policy management systems entering the mainstream during the next few years.