IBM takes 'Pulse' of service management market

Industry analysis by Beth Schultz, plus the latest news headlines.

IBM this week will host its inaugural service management show, dubbed Pulse 2008, at which Big Blue intends to update products and services designed to improve operational efficiencies for customers looking to improve service delivery while keeping costs in check.

The show brings together three product sets from three IBM acquisitions: Tivoli, Micromuse and MRO Software. But IBM officials say the software suites of the respective acquired companies have been integrated to deliver on IBM's goal to help customers deliver higher-quality IT services at lower costs. IBM Global Technology Services will also take part in the service management show -- expected to draw up to 4,500 attendees spanning IBM employees, business partners and customers -- with new services designed to help enterprise IT managers better prepare for optimizing service management in their environments.

To start, Big Blue is offering through its services organization the Service Management Quick Start and Healthcheck offering. The services include an upfront analysis of current IT and business environments, after which IBM would suggest best practices to help customers improve IT efficiency and alignment with business strategy.

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IBM this week will host its inaugural service management show, dubbed Pulse 2008, at which Big Blue intends to update products and services designed to improve operational efficiencies for customers looking to improve service delivery while keeping costs in check.

The show brings together three product sets from three IBM acquisitions: Tivoli, Micromuse and MRO Software. But IBM officials say the software suites of the respective acquired companies have been integrated to deliver on IBM's goal to help customers deliver higher-quality IT services at lower costs. IBM Global Technology Services will also take part in the service management show -- expected to draw up to 4,500 attendees spanning IBM employees, business partners and customers -- with new services designed to help enterprise IT managers better prepare for optimizing service management in their environments.

To start, Big Blue is offering through its services organization the Service Management Quick Start and Healthcheck offering. The services include an upfront analysis of current IT and business environments, after which IBM would suggest best practices to help customers improve IT efficiency and alignment with business strategy.

As part of these services IBM updated its free IBM Tivoli Unified Process tool. IT managers can tap the Web-based tool for information, guidance and detailed how-to steps to help them better understand and implement the processes laid out in the ITIL best practice framework, which focuses in part on service delivery, service assurance and service management. IBM will also join competitors BMC and CA with a foray into service accelerators, or on ramps, to adopting service management best practices and products.

IBM will make available this week "new accelerator services to help clients double the speed of implementation and maximize their IT investment by leveraging IBM's vast experience in deploying Tivoli software," an IBM press release reads. "Using a business value calculator to help clients establish baseline gain, IBM's new accelerator services using a series of standardized templates and workflows to help clients take advantage of experiences from other implementations."

Big Blue also integrated five products to provide service delivery and process automation to customers looking to cut the costs around service requests. IBM says its Service Delivery and Process Automation Foundation integrates Tivoli Service Request Manager, Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database, Tivoli Asset Management for IT, Maximo Asset Management and Tivoli Release Process Manager. This product bundle is integrated, includes workflows and uses an architecture built on the ITIL Version 3 best practice framework. IBM says this foundation can cut service requests costs by up to 50% in customer environments.

"IBM's service management message is that we have done it and we can help customers get the right set of people in place in their organizations to ultimately make the IT operations run smoother, which will make the business run smoother," says Doug Brown, vice president of service management at IBM Tivoli.

Schultz is a longtime IT journalist. You can email her or find her here.