]> Tivoli Beat - A Weekly IT Service Management Perspective en-us Copyright 2006 IBM Corporation godfreyk@us.ibm.com gjscosta@br.ibm.com http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/rss/ http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/images/TivoliBeatLogo.gif http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/current.html For many organizations, unstructured data, such as spreadsheets and word processing documents, represents up to 80 percent of all data, yet lacks the security required to shield it from unauthorized access. Such organizations may want to consider the IBM Unstructured Data Security Solution, based on three integrated offerings, which helps organizations lock down business data more comprehensively via automated classification, policy management and trusted insider monitoring. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/07082008.html?s_cmp=rss Organizations seeking to accelerate and improve software provisioning need look no further than IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager 5.1.1 and its new Web Replay feature. Through Web Replay, administrators can easily automate common tasks, quickly train new IT staff members, and generally enhance software provisioning in many contexts, ranging from data centers to test environments. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/07012008.html?s_cmp=rss Today's organizations require continuous protection of core data wherever it exists in the infrastructure—and exceptionally swift restoration at times of data loss. IBM's recent acquisition of FilesX gives its customers three powerful, targeted solutions to achieve exactly these goals. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/06242008.html?s_cmp=rss The new Tivoli Service Request Manager 7.1 boasts new features in both the service desk and catalog components to empower and inform the IT response to end user problems. And because the solution leverages the Tivoli Process Automation Platform, it also helps by connecting service requests to related IT domains such as change management for more optimized and cost-efficient overall operations. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/06172008.html?s_cmp=rss Organizations looking to achieve best business value from software provisioning should consider the new IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Operating System Deployment. The latest version, 5.1.1, incorporates powerful new features such as DoD-class data overwriting and support for VMWare ESX 3.x infrastructure to drive data center virtualization. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/06102008.html?s_cmp=rss IBM's ongoing commitment to mid-market, growing customers is clearer than ever. With new solutions, online resources, and a new accreditation initiative, IBM helps empower these customers with the information and tools they need to get the most business value from IBM Tivoli solutions. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/06032008.html?s_cmp=rss Client-side technical issues can easily hamper the efficiency of IT operations. IBM Tivoli Remote Control addresses that challenge by giving IT staff remote access to any supported target machine, allowing full problem resolution in many cases without requiring a personal trip. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/05272008.html?s_cmp=rss Service management strategies can help organizations improve service levels by aligning business needs with the service infrastructure. But where to get started? IBM has identified five common entry points, each with relevant projects, through which organizations can achieve measurable improvement in service levels—fast. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/05132008.html?s_cmp=rss Strong encryption is essential to securing organizational data, but managing keys is far from simple. What many organizations require today is federated key management to link different solutions and secure data in all three of its broad categories—data at rest, data in use, and data in motion. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/05062008.html?s_cmp=rss Effective security requires effective enforcement of security policies. For organizations looking for a unified way to secure applications in many different contexts, IBM Tivoli Access Manager 6.1 now delivers faster, more flexible, and more scalable organizational security than ever before. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/04222008.html?s_cmp=rss In a perfect world, software provisioning tools would integrate with software development tools to create a unified, efficient application deployment process. IBM Provisioning Manager does just that by integrating seamlessly with the IBM Rational development portfolio, accelerating time-to-value for new applications and application revisions. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/04152008.html?s_cmp=rss Tracking IT costs across organizational or technological boundaries can be complicated, especially in today's enterprise-class, virtualized datacenters. Simplifying that complexity is IBM Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager, which pulls cost information from many different sources and presents it in straightforward reports designed to help organizations align costs with business objectives and reduce operational overhead when possible. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/04082008.html?s_cmp=rss Portal Partnership, an IBM Premier Business Partner, had a complex challenge: Develop and deploy a comprehensive new provisioning strategy, spanning both development and operations, to help a client achieve improved compliance. The solution: IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager, an optimized, enterprise-class provisioning tool. The project time required: Less than you might think. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/04012008.html?s_cmp=rss Asset management is a key focus for enterprises going forward, and the IBM Maximo product family delivers the industry's only holistic, end-to-end asset management solution built on a single platform. What's more, the IBM Tivoli User Groups site now offers many types of content specifically aimed at meeting the needs of IBM Maximo users. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/03252008.html?s_cmp=rss As organizations increasingly utilize IT as an instrument of business goals and strategies, they must ensure business value by securing IT at every level—data, identity pools, applications, and networks. Moving from point solutions to end-to-end, adaptive strategies is the key theme of IBM’s presence at RSA 2008, a major security-centric conference taking place in San Francisco this year. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/03182008.html?s_cmp=rss Innovation is the key to success. IBM's Blue Cloud offerings, driven by IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager, foster innovation by creating a flexible design and testing platform that also reduces costs and simplifies IT infrastructure and management. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/03112008.html?s_cmp=rss For IT professionals and business managers looking to get a leg up on the many changes taking place in IT security today, one excellent opportunity comes from the IBM Security Roadshow. This multi-city event will tackle security topics ranging from compliance to identity management to information security. Register now!. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/03042008.html?s_cmp=rss To help you stay In Touch, In Tune, and In Sync with the service management industry, IBM Pulse 2008 comes to the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Florida this May 18-22. At this premiere event, professionals working in enterprise IT, plant management, or communications service can interact with peers, learn from technical gurus and IBM executives, build and extend business relationships, and even achieve technical certification in key areas. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/02262008.html?s_cmp=rss Application security is a key element of any comprehensive security strategy. IBM Tivoli and IBM Rational solutions can deliver in key areas of authentication, authorization and compliance, securing applications and driving business value throughout the application lifecycle. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/02192008.html?s_cmp=rss Effective asset management is key to getting best business results from enterprise-class IT. Fortunately, IBM offers a holistic, unified solution designed to track and monitor all IT assets, creating actionable business intelligence in the process. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/02122008.html?s_cmp=rss At Marist College, rolling out new IT applications requires a rigorous initial test process. IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager helps simplify and shorten that testing process, ultimately resulting in better software, faster. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/02052008.html?s_cmp=rss With IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager, organizations can accelerate and improve every aspect of software provisioning, a particularly critical aspect of data center optimization. And thanks to TPM 5.1.1's innovative new features, the solution is more powerful and easier to use than ever before. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/01292008.html?s_cmp=rss Getting best results from diverse solutions can be a challenge. One answer to that challenge is OPAL, an online library of integration modules aimed at making it as easy as possible for IT professionals to maximize IBM Tivoli solution integration and interoperability. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/01222008.html?s_cmp=rss Customer Experience Management (CEM) is essential in telecom service assurance, a mechanism for understanding the relevance of services to customers and delivering true, valuable intelligence about customer behaviour and service adoption across multiple dimensions. With IBM’s new offering, IBM Tivoli Netcool Service Quality Manager, service providers are better positioned to ensure high customer satisfaction than ever before. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/01082008.html?s_cmp=rss Innovation is the key to business success, but achieving it means reducing operational spending and optimizing IT to support new strategies. IBM Service Management, as pursued through IBM Tivoli solutions, can help. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/01082008.html?s_cmp=rss The Tivoli User Group site boasts a new feature, Be Heard!, which empowers users to generate and publish their own content, unlocking their collective domain expertise to the benefit of all. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/12182007.html?s_cmp=rss Managing information risk is increasingly important, across every IT application and at every stage in the data lifecycle. IBM Tivoli system management solutions can help you achieve information assurance. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/12112007.html?s_cmp=rss Automating OS provisioning through a best-in-class tool can confer many business benefits for enterprise IT—especially in the case of Linux, an OS requiring extra expertise to install and configure. Learn how IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment is just such a solution. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/12042007.html?s_cmp=rss Getting best business value from a complex data center means, in part, reducing its operational costs as much as possible. IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager can help by provisioning data across physical and virtual servers in accordance with actual demand, thus reducing energy consumption during off-peak hours. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/11132007.html?s_cmp=rss Today's security strategies must address internal as well as external threats. By monitoring, tracking and controlling privileged-user access to core IT assets, IBM Tivoli systems management solutions can help. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/11062007.html?s_cmp=rss Server virtualization has transformed enterprise-class datacenters. By deploying multiple virtual servers on a single physical server, enterprises have dramatically improved server resource utilization while reducing operational costs such as energy consumption—thus leaving the datacenter a more flexible instrument of business strategy than ever before. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/10232007.html?s_cmp=rss Gyldendal, a Denmark-based publishing house, needed a complete revision of its data backup strategy. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager proved the best-in-class solution the company required to consolidate all backup operations, centralize management, and achieve significant gains in automation and total performance. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/10162007.html?s_cmp=rss IBM Tivoli Storage Manager is a leading solution in the enterprise-class backup/restore space. With version 5.5, available in mid-November, customers can expect a host of new enhancements and features in key areas such as performance, security, ease of use, and interoperability. Learn about the new features you can expect with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager version 5.5 http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/10092007.html?s_cmp=rss Though commonly associated with the enterprise market, the IBM Tivoli portfolio is admirably suited for mid-market growing businesses. Customers looking to improve their business resilience, IT operational efficiency, and security from both internal and external threats, should consider the best-in-class, scalable Tivoli portfolio. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/10022007.html?s_cmp=rss Getting a grip on energy consumption is essential to the enterprise's bottom line and the bigger-picture ecological impact. IBM’s strategies and solutions reflect a serious commitment to reduce consumption whenever possible. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/09252007.html?s_cmp=rss Achieving a total security strategy means tracking security logs throughout the organization as well as mapping breaches to operational consequences—and potential violations of governmental regulations. The IBM Tivoli Security and Compliance Offering answers all these challenges in a unified solution. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/09182007.html?s_cmp=rss The IBM Business Continuity Service Level Protection solution helps maximize business continuity through a tailored, multi-phase, multi-class strategy which delivers services and products in a way that can evolve as business needs change. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/09112007.html?s_cmp=rss One way to optimize enterprise IT is through automated solutions – especially when they work together. The IBM Tivoli system management portfolio offers just such integration for the fastest possible time-to-solution. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/09042007.html?s_cmp=rss Monitoring a complex wireless carrier network that routes ten million calls a day is no easy feat. Hong Kong-based SmarTone-Vodafone chose IBM Tivoli Netcool to monitor that network and experienced an eighty percent reduction in fault events as a result. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/08282007.html?s_cmp=rss Improve your software provisioning process for test machines. With IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager, the enterprise can automate and script all software provisioning, leading ultimately to improved testing and better software. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/08212007.html?s_cmp=rss United Space Alliance needed to streamline and accelerate its diverse IT operations. ITIL best practices and IBM Tivoli solutions delivered substantial improvements—fast. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/08142007.html?s_cmp=rss Maximizing return on IT investment is all about getting the most out of solutions. For IBM Tivoli customers, therefore, a few central questions of continuing interest are: Would it be possible to obtain more business value from the Tivoli solutions I have? Should I consider buying new solutions? How can I bring myself up to speed on the latest developments in Tivoli solutions, deployment, integration, and best practices? Such focused questions demand equally focused answers. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/08072007.html?s_cmp=rss Imagine you are the CTO of an enterprise-class company. Fundamentally, your task is to oversee IT at your company, solving today's technology problems with a continual eye on tomorrow's needs. That's a challenge of enormous complexity, and solving it requires both enterprise-class tools and enterprise-class best practices. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/07242007.html?s_cmp=rss Any successful enterprise relies on strong customer communications. Start with the idea that business success comes in proportion to customer satisfaction, and it follows that tracking the level of that satisfaction is crucial to the business. Without a continual stream of information flowing to and from its customers, the enterprise risks falling out of touch with customer interests, customer needs, and, most critically, customer pain points. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/07172007.html?s_cmp=rss Identity management is a central challenge in today's increasingly competitive business environment. As the enterprise works to become more responsive to emerging opportunities, and more resilient to emerging threats, establishing secure transactions through validated authentication becomes more important than ever. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/07102007.html?s_cmp=rss Imagine you are the CTO of an enterprise-class company. Fundamentally, your task is to oversee IT at your company, solving today's technology problems with a continual eye on tomorrow's needs. That's a challenge of enormous complexity, and solving it requires both enterprise-class tools and enterprise-class best practices. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/07032007.html?s_cmp=rss Service management begins with a simple premise: paying customers should receive good service. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/06262007.html?s_cmp=rss Business success for the wireless service provider lies in the minds of its subscribers, often numbered in the millions. These subscribers expect to be offered a continuous stream of new services that span wireless radio and IP-based technologies. They expect to experience the highest quality of service at competitively low rates. Most importantly, the quality of service they experience is quantified in stringent service level agreements – agreements that stipulate credit be applied to customer accounts for any service parameters that fall short of agreed levels. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/06192007.html?s_cmp=rss How can enterprise IT achieve and maintain business resilience? As IT has become more and more tightly integrated into business operations, the data it generates has become mission-critical, and maintaining the integrity of that data has become mission-critical as well. Fortunately, the tech industry has responded with a broad range of disaster recovery solutions, spanning many classes of products from many vendors. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/06122007.html?s_cmp=rss Desktop support ranks among the most challenging tasks handled by enterprise IT today. One reason for this is the sheer size of the installed base of desktop computers. Many enterprises have thousands of employees, yet the IT staff supporting them is several orders of magnitude smaller. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/06052007.html?s_cmp=rss It's widely accepted that enterprise IT security is more important than ever before. As IT solutions have become more complex and sophisticated, so have the threats confronting them. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/05292007.html?s_cmp=rss One of the central stories of enterprise IT in the last decade has been the growing power of open solutions. Usually, this philosophy applies to the technology itself. If a software product's code is available to the public, it's called open source, and hardware which uses public protocols is said to embrace open standards. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/05222007.html?s_cmp=rss Data storage is among the most dynamic fields in technology today. Enterprises have demanded ever-increasing storage to handle the data generated by applications of ever-increasing complexity, and vendors have rapidly responded with new technologies. Just as data capacity has climbed, data costs per unit of storage have fallen. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/05152007.html?s_cmp=rss Composite applications offer some of the most exciting possibilities in enterprise software development today. In large part, this is due to the straightforward model they represent in the solution of complex business problems. Composite applications are built via the integration and orchestration of services and processes actually in use in the business, drawing data from such diverse sources as databases, other programs written in languages like Java, and the Web. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/05082007.html?s_cmp=rss Support is a classic challenge for technology providers, and often the challenge scales in proportion to the technology. In the case of a company like IBM, the challenge is immense. No technology company has as rich and diverse a portfolio of software and hardware. Toward this end, IBM has responded with many different forms of support, some of them automated, thus essentially using technology to support technology. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/04302007.html?s_cmp=rss Most enterprise applications, including web services, are characteristically data-driven. Long before anyone had heard of Information Technology, every major enterprise had a Data Processing (DP) department. Long before the first room-size computers were invading the loading docks of companies, sorting and tabulating machines were clattering and whirring away in their back office DP departments. This is the caldron from which the first computer applications were brewed. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/04242007.html?s_cmp=rss In the new millennium, security has emerged as a major challenge for enterprise IT. While the enterprise has a greater need than ever for network and resource access and availability—in which the right information gets to the right people at the right time—many forms of security problems threaten that goal. External malware is an obvious example, as is external denial of service attacks, but recent studies suggest that misconfiguration errors and internal security breaches by employees can be even more operationally significant and prevalent. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/04172007.html?s_cmp=rss Wireless services have experienced phenomenal growth in the new millennium. Attracted by the convenience and mobility wireless solutions provide, customers have increasingly demanded them, and vendors and service providers have responded by delivering a whole new class of technologies designed to match their interest. The result? Services are becoming available wherever you happen to be, whenever you need them. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/04102007.html?s_cmp=rss Business growth often translates into market share growth. That is, in a fairly saturated market, one company's gain is often going to mean another company's loss. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/04032007.html?s_cmp=rss Remote management is central to modern IT processes. Enterprise IT staffs often deal with heavy demand; the more they can accomplish remotely, the better. If remote management can be paired with automation so that direct human supervision isn't required for an ongoing process, that's a double win for the business. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/03272007.html?s_cmp=rss Centralizing Authentication Without Side Effects One of the core challenges facing modern enterprises is centralized authentication management. Employees need straightforward access to services and information, yet IT managers must reduce security threats and system complexity. These two business goals are often in conflict. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/03202007.html?s_cmp=rss Standing out from the pack In today's competitive Darwinian marketplace, what's the best way for a company to distinguish itself? http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/03132007.html?s_cmp=rss Support is a perennial challenge to the technology sector. Vendors want their customers to be informed and satisfied, and customers want quick and thorough answers when they have technical questions. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/03062007.html?s_cmp=rss Consider a traditional steel blade. It performs best when it's sharpest; this is because with the thinnest blade, the most power can be concentrated on the smallest space. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/02272007.html?s_cmp=rss In the new millennium, file service and archiving solutions have emerged as one of the hottest sectors in the IT field, and it's easy to see why. If a mission-critical server fails, entire corporate divisions may grind involuntarily to a halt. The premise that time is money is never more self-evident than when a key server goes offline and a hundred employees take an involuntary coffee break. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/02202007.html?s_cmp=rss Technology guru Paul Graham—best known for selling Viaweb to Yahoo in the late nineties—says the mission statement of all businesses can be abstracted into something quite simple: You make something people need, and you refine it over time to meet that need more perfectly. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/02132007.html?s_cmp=rss No one would expect nuclear power plant operators to improvise procedures. Yet, large IT organizations have long accepted the improvisation of procedures by storage administrators. With the introduction of IBM Tivoli® Storage Process Manager, IT is finally able to align storage process management processes with ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) defined process flows while automating best practices to improve important storage-related operations, including provisioning and backup incident prioritization. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/02062007.html?s_cmp=rss Global operations and strict governmental requirements for extensive records retention have shattered the common notion of a backup window for IT. Few sites are now in a position to shutdown all data processing and backup their data and applications. They certainly cannot do so with complete confidence that 100% of the data is up to date. As more edge applications run 24X7 and competitive pressures drive mechanisms to sense-and-respond to market changes, the ability to shutdown mission-critical applications dwindles. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/01302007.html?s_cmp=rss The IBM® Tivoli® Open Process Automation Library (OPAL) is a comprehensive, easy-to-access online catalog that currently contains over 500 pre-defined validated product extensions for Tivoli products, such as: automation packages, integration adapters and modules, together with instructional documentation. The OPAL Library enables Tivoli customers to maximize the integration capabilities of their Tivoli applications and reduce deployment time through product extensions. The latest additions to OPAL include a catalog for Netcool/OMNIbus integration modules with associated documentation available for download. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/01232007.html?s_cmp=rss Attention IT Managers and IT decision makers from Boston, to Barcelona, to Bangkok; IBM® is hosting essential half-day Service Management seminars around the globe on that include in-depth presentations and demonstrations. IBM Service Management solutions can help you and your organization achieve competitive advantage through. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/01162007.html?s_cmp=rss Since 1982, new federal rules and regulations on U.S. businesses have increased by 114,000. The Cato Institute pegs the impact of this regulatory burden on the economy at $1 trillion. This makes regulatory compliance a major corporate issue that is now having a major impact on IT. Thanks to a growing number of regulations like Sarbanes Oxley, one of this year’s major IT trends has been the establishment of risk and compliance architectures. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/01092007.html?s_cmp=rss For IT, the rollout of a new operating system can be a traumatic time. For the rollout of Microsoft®’s new Windows Vista™ Operating System (OS), without the proper deployment tool, traumatic is a tepid descriptor. The thought of a new OS, with a new security model and a new installation scheme, is enough to stir up IT’s worst nightmares. The universal solution is a thorough period of pilot testing. To speed that testing, IBM® Tivoli® Provisioning Manager for Operating System Deployment (TPM for OS Deployment) can take the sting out of implementing a new OS and provide IT what is arguably the most complete tool set for any other OS deployment. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/01022007.html?s_cmp=rss How do you tell that someone works in IT? They have a 2GB USB Flash Drive to hold their to-do list. To be funny, satire needs a certain degree of truth and the overburdened work schedule of IT professionals is far too real. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/12262006.html?s_cmp=rss Threats to an enterprise's IT environment and the constant worry of the consequences of these threats have troubled CIOs for a long time. As IT has gone from a back-end function to one that is recognized as offering a strategic advantage, the importance of IT security has moved to the forefront. It is now recognized by line-of-business executives and vendors as a key component of any business system. As a result, the airwaves are constantly being bombarded with advertising messages to "tell your CIO that you know how to handle a plethora of security issues." http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/12192006.html?s_cmp=rss For many companies today, a key strategy used to drive revenue growth and improve brand equity is to align the four primary components of their business—people, processes, information, and technology—and use them to drive high value-add services. Being a service provider can be a daunting task, especially for those new to the role. Whether new or well versed in providing services, the offering can help organizations identify such critical success factors as the absolute importance of process. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/12122006.html?s_cmp=rss Whether it is new markets, competitors, regulations, or workforces, the rapid-fire pace of business change continues to drive companies to look for new ways to adapt and respond more quickly. Nonetheless, a business can only be as flexible as the IT systems that support it. Service oriented architecture (SOA) is a significant evolutionary step in applications infrastructure intended to help IT organizations meet the complex challenge of delivering agility and adaptability to an enterprise. By representing business processes as repeatable tasks, dubbed services, an SOA creates a dynamic environment that breaks static security schemes and requires security management that integrates identity management, end-to-end message-level security, and single sign-on for users as found in the IBM® Tivoli® security management solutions family. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/12052006.html?s_cmp=rss Funding IT capital growth in today’s businesses is quickly becoming an issue of garnering savings out of IT operations. For some time, CIOs have been under a mandate to do more with less: cut costs, and at the same time, drive new capabilities for mission-critical applications. From a technology perspective, a critical component to making IT operations more efficient is virtualization. Working with resources unconstrained by physical limitations gives IT a way to squeeze significantly higher rates of utilization for equipment and generate savings through cost reduction and avoidance. While separating the logical notion of a device from its physical limitations makes it easier to manage the device, it also significantly increases the complexity of accounting for the usage of that device. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/11282006.html?s_cmp=rss For any enterprise, a customer that is willing to act as a reference is one of the most valuable of all business assets. There is no better way to support a sales or marketing effort than to have a satisfied customer to speak on behalf of a product or service that they purchased. By doing so, that customer goes a long way toward validating the vendor’s marketing message and eliminating uncertainty in the minds of potential customers. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/11212006.html?s_cmp=rss For service providers, the Tivoli® Netcool® portfolio delivers end-to-end service management to help meet the fiercely competitive needs of emerging service markets. With over 1,800 customers in 45 countries, the Netcool family of solutions provides a flexible, cost-effective solution to meet the most demanding customer requirements. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/11142006.html?s_cmp=rss Most enterprise applications, including web services, are characteristically data-driven. Long before anyone had heard of Information Technology, every major enterprise had a Data Processing (DP) department. Long before the first room-size computers were invading the loading docks of companies, sorting and tabulating machines were clattering and whirring away in their back office DP departments. This is the caldron from which the first computer applications were brewed. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/11072006.html?s_cmp=rss At this moment, somewhere around the world a commercial airliner is sitting on a runway waiting for clearance to begin takeoff. Soon, it will begin to accelerate down the runway, and at a critical moment the copilot will call out the command, "rotate." At that instant, the pilot will pull back on the controls, the aircraft will rotate along its longitudinal axis, the nose will point up a few degrees, and a very heavy jet aircraft will begin lifting off of the ground. Everyone in the cockpit knows the drill. Everyone on the plane believes it will happen. Precious few know how or why it does. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/10312006.html?s_cmp=rss Today, business is obsessed with the notion of time. Our entire business lexicon revolves around issues associated with time: Whether it is lead-time, lag-time, or time to market, the currency of business is the value of time. Inextricably tied to this fixation on the value of time is the movement of information. Turn back the pages of time and life in the Middle Ages was marked by a perpetual present. For the medieval adult, the modern notion of time had no meaning and, more importantly, information was bounded by what he or what someone that he knew had observed. Life in a perpetual present started changing with the introduction of paper from China, and began to move on with rumble of Guttenberg’s moveable type, but it was the clatter of Hollerith’s tabulation by punch card that really got things accelerating. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/10242006.html?s_cmp=rss IT support personnel were aptly described by an MIT professor as, "the people who do the groundwork on which our productivity depends." It is their job to deal with the thorny support challenges that require rapid resolution and likely involve the interplay of application software, middleware, and at least one operating system. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/10172006.html?s_cmp=rss The deployment and release of new software is a classic white-knuckles period for any CIO. This is the time when end-users feel the most vulnerable and CIOs are the most susceptible to criticism. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/10102006.html?s_cmp=rss Service management is rapidly becoming a central issue for a growing number of businesses all over the world. This new focus stems from the desire to improve brand equity by offering high quality, value-added services that attract and retain customers. But to deliver on this critical objective, virtually all common business functions need to be rallied: cost management, regulatory compliance, security risk reduction, and above all, the meeting of financial performance and market share growth expectations. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/10022006.html?s_cmp=rss On January 25th, 2003, the BBC World Service reported on an attack by a fast-spreading piece of malicious computer code that dramatically slowed Internet traffic and interfered with e-mail delivery. The BBC chronicled the attack as having been started at about 5:30 a.m. GMT by a malicious piece of code just 376 bytes in size. With extraordinary prescience, they compared the attack to the Code-Red virus, which had brought Internet traffic to a halt in the summer of 2001. By Sunday, CNN reported that the attack had shut down 13,000 ATM's within the Bank of America network. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/09262006.html?s_cmp=rss For some time, Linux® has been a hot server technology for midsized businesses. Now there are over 6,000 ISV applications available on Linux to entice IT demand even further. In Linux, many IT decision makers see the solid reliability of UNIX® enhanced with greater flexibility in the choice of hardware for lower total cost of ownership. On the other hand, others see an ease-of use that rivals Microsoft® Windows with the solid reliability and security of UNIX. What is common to those looking to Linux from either a UNIX or Windows perspective is security. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/09182006.html?s_cmp=rss Dealing with issues from shrinking product life cycles to expanding global markets has led businesses to pursue real-time sense-and-respond operational strategies. At the same time, growing regulatory pressures are putting significant restrictions on the access, handling, and retention of data. For IT, those issues are fostering a growing dependence on database-resident transactional data, which leaves production systems susceptible to performance degradation as the volume of data expands. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/09122006.html?s_cmp=rss We are rapidly approaching the 25th anniversary of the breakup of AT&T. At the time, this grand legal experiment appeared to be the biggest parting of the waves since Moses. Naturally, such disruption engendered significant opposition from many quarters, including Defense Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, who argued that the military needed a single, integrated communications network, and Nobel laureate and Big Bang luminary Arno A. Penzias, who adamantly believed that the innovative Bell Labs would flounder. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/09052006.html?s_cmp=rss When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast last year, it not only ravaged the landscape of the Gulf region, it also devastated countless paper-based medical records and exposed the extraordinary gulf between the state of IT for medical research and the state of IT for healthcare delivery. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/08302006.html?s_cmp=rss Controlling access to data is a critical element to any security policy. While the challenge is universal, there's a very wide range of security access needs for individual sites. At the extreme end of security consciousness, one site is using a 3,000-line security policy just to define the rules securing three servers. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/08222006.html?s_cmp=rss For IT to function successfully in an On Demand business environment, it must master change as a normal event. The old line that change is constant has finally given way to the realization that change is changing—it's accelerating. In the face of that accelerating change, IT is frequently called upon to repurpose existing infrastructure, such as reprovisioning an older database server as a Web server, as well as to roll out new equipment, especially in the form of new laptop or desktop PCs. Typically, these are highly labor-intensive tasks that could be made significantly more cost-effective and less prone to error through automation, with a solution such as IBM® Tivoli® Provisioning Manager. What's more, Tivoli Provisioning Manager integrates with Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB) in a sophisticated ITSM framework. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/08152006.html?s_cmp=rss Today's software applications can be tricky to deploy, diagnose, and troubleshoot – challenges which only become exponentially more complex in a multi-tier service-oriented architecture (SOA). As a result, CIOs, who are constantly under pressure to cut IT overhead, are making built-in manageability and instrumentation to ease the load on their operations staff a non-negotiable requirement for applications. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/08082006.html?s_cmp=rss IT Service Management (ITSM) is all about delivering IT as a service by managing IT as a set of discrete consistent processes which can be automated. That notion alone will be enough to generate a steady stream of theoretical papers coming from the Harvard, Sloan, Stanford, and Wharton business schools. For the real world of IT, however, what's needed is an actionable infrastructure plan that is built on real products. What's more, those real products need to work with and encompass the existing real products from multiple vendors already in use. All of the rigorous consistency and repeatability of ITSM is of little value if, at the end of the process, it does not deliver greater choice and flexibility in terms of adding new hardware, applications, and middleware. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/08012006.html?s_cmp=rss Across all industries and all sizes of business, IT is challenged with security issues never dreamed of in the halcyon days of planning for Y2K. Then, the major issue for IT was single sign-on for internal users. As new operating systems were introduced and mission-critical applications proliferated, each having their own user directory, end users rapidly became frustrated trying to weave their way through a maze of usernames and passwords. Large IT shops found themselves trying to manage with an infrastructure of up to 100 different fragmented user data repositories. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/07252006.html?s_cmp=rss Surveys of backup practices at mid-sized businesses by Imation show a remarkable absence of concern for performance or time constraints; but administrators have considerable concern for backup procedures. That concern is centered on complexity and proper implementation. To solve that problem IBM developed Tivoli Continuous Data Protection (CDP) for Files, which is specifically targeted at end-user computers such as laptops and workstations. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/07182006.html?s_cmp=rss Talk to a CEO or CFO about business applications and they'll tell you that they want the ability to quickly sense and respond to business-environment changes no matter from where in the value chain those changes are coming. For an application to meet those needs, it must be easy to integrate with existing business functions and rapidly deployed. For a CIO to deliver that kind of application, it takes an IT environment built around a service-oriented architecture (SOA), in which services are composed of elemental business functions with well-defined, standards-based interfaces. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/07112006.html?s_cmp=rss Early this year, the Forrester research report, North America's 2006 Enterprise IT Spending Outlook, cited 77% of firms as having rated the improvement of IT efficiency as their most important operational priority in 2006. Making matters worse, the Forrester report came on the heels of findings by Gartner Research in "U.S. IT Spending and Staffing Survey, 2005" that pegged 75% of IT budgets as going to maintain the status quo. Dig a little deeper and you'll find that nearly 25% of the money allocated to maintenance goes into software support. If you dare to add in help desk costs, that number starts closing in on 40%. Is it any wonder that IT is often thought of as an impediment, rather than as an enabler to business efficiency and growth? http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/07042006.html?s_cmp=rss A recent market share report confirms that IBM has maintained the top position in IT Operations Management for the 5th consecutive year. To get a perspective on the current ITOM market and how it is evolving toward IT Service Management (ITSM), we talked to Michael McCarthy, Director of Strategy, IBM Tivoli Software. http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/06272006.html?s_cmp=rss Starting in the mid 1980s, small to mid-size businesses have been going through an IT evolution that has taken them from being PC-centric in their technology, to being Internet-centric, and now to embarking on becoming network-centric with distributed systems and early pilot grid projects. IT at these sites is faced with a unique set of challenges and the IBM Tivoli® Express Portfolio™ of IT management software addresses those challenges in the following areas: http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/06202006.html?s_cmp=rss For CIOs, today's foremost issue is how to demonstrate that IT is functioning as effectively as the other lines of business within their company. These hard-pressed CIOs, however, have little time for theory and an immediate need for an actionable plan to begin implementing IT Service Management (ITSM). To meet that need, the IBM IT Service Management Roadshow will be laying out a roadmap to a practical ITSM transition in over 50 cities worldwide between May and September 20th. At each event, IT practitioners are led through four critical business scenarios and learn to: http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/beat/06132006.html?s_cmp=rss