Sifting through the SLM mess

The market is flooded with service-level management products and services, making selection of an appropriate service management product a challenge.

Enterprise Management Associates estimates there are nearly 1,000 providers of management software and hardware, not including single-brand, element-centric providers and legacy telecommunications solution providers, and not including pure services, such as those from management service providers. Of these 1,000 vendors, roughly a third say they offer some form of service management.

Consolidation in the SLM market has yet to occur - and even when it does, history shows that new players will emerge to address small, niche requirements, so the total number is likely to remain high for some time.

Plus, in spite of much real innovation, implementations of SLM are not yet mature. EMA has seen a widespread lack of satisfaction in existing products. It's a lot like TV - there are a lot of choices but nothing you really want to watch. As a result, users often resort to developing their own management tools or to cobbling together an "SLM solution" from a combination of off-the-shelf tools designed for other needs. Generally speaking, these are tactical approaches destined for short lives.

The best bet is to start with the basics. That means getting a clear idea of how SLM can serve your particular needs. SLM ties business objectives to IT and then measures performance against those objectives. More than other areas of technology, this drives the need first and foremost to understand your business requirements in detail. They will be different for a financial organization than for a telecommunications service provider.

Once the field has been narrowed, you must determine the type of SLM functionality required for your environment, asking questions like these:

* What infrastructure (network, systems and applications) is critical to meeting your service agreements?

* Do you need an overarching business contract to define your service-level agreements (SLA), or is it adequate to set thresholds that reflect your service-level objectives (SLO)? (SLOs are technically defined requirements that often target the performance of individual elements that comprise a service.)

* What management products are already collecting data related to the service quality most relevant to you?

* What SLM capabilities do you need for real-time control? What SLM capabilities do you need for historical reporting and business planning? What products offer the most economies and accuracy in serving both real-time and historical needs?

* Will you need the ability to proactively and automatically make adjustments to avoid service breaches? If you do, will you have the confidence to tap into products that make decisions based on rules-based engines or other related advanced intelligence capabilities?

Fortunately, there are common features required for SLM as well. First and foremost, all applications of SLM demand a highly customizable and flexible reporting system. This is true whether you need a real-time, proactive system or simply need to look historically at the results. Other SLM features include alarming and notification on SLA violations, integration with third-party management tools, the ability to define an SLO, service modeling, and synthetic transactions used to measure the user experience.

EMA is looking to help resolve these critical buyer issues through the introduction of an SLM Buyer's Guide - what we believe is the industry's most comprehensive look at the overall SLM marketplace - with an overall roadmap and well over 50, possibly as many as 100, vendors represented. This guide will offer a tutorial for decision-makers purchasing SLM products and will categorize the multitude of products in the market. You can get more details at:

www.enterprisemanagement.com/slmbuyersguide.html

Dennis Drogseth is a director with Enterprise Management Associates, a leading analyst and market research firm based in Boulder, Colorado, focusing exclusively on all aspects of enterprise management. Dennis has extensive experience in network management platforms and products and is researching trends in management software and changing IT roles internationally. His 18-plus years of experience in high-tech includes positions at IBM and Cabletron. He has been quoted in the press and is a speaker at industry events. He can be reached via e-mail.

Audrey Rasmussen is a research director with Enterprise Management Associates in Boulder, Colorado, a leading analyst and market research firm focusing exclusively on all aspects of enterprise management. Audrey has more than 20 years of experience working with distributed systems, applications and networks. Her current focus at EMA is e-business, SMB/SME and MSPs. She can be reached via e-mail.

Enterprise Management Associates in Boulder, Colorado, is a leading analyst and market research firm focusing exclusively on all aspects of enterprise management software and services.