New IBM Tivoli Service Management Software, Tools and Resources Help Companies Combat IT Complexity

ARMONK, NY - 06 Oct 2006: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new service management software, tools and business partner resources to help organizations address the vexing complexity, performance bottlenecks and disparate technologies that make it difficult to deliver services, from approving a loan to delivering video to a cell phone.

With today’s announcement, IBM is extending its service management portfolio of software, hardware and services with new offerings to help companies automate and integrate complex technology via services oriented architecture, or SOA, which is a way to reuse a company’s existing infrastructure to more closely align with business goals. This enables companies to deliver better quality services to customers while generating greater efficiencies, cost savings and productivity. IBM Global Services will work with organizations to evaluate and deploy service management technology.

Bolstered by recent acquisitions such as MRO Software, Micromuse, Rembo, Collation, Isogon and CIMS Labs, IBM is transforming the scope of service management to encompass the automation of IT processes, network operations, IT assets and industrial assets such as power plants, buildings and fleets of trucks and automobiles. This provides organizations with a simple and consolidated way to manage all their assets, which increases business efficiency and cost savings.

Service management provides the backbone for a wide range of business services. It weaves together processes for executing stock trades, delivering voice over IP calls, and integrating data from RFID tags on pharmaceutical packaging to fight counterfeit drugs. It also integrates processes that protect sensitive financial data from being accessed by intruders and helps companies share information about their products and customers.

“System complexity is approaching a level beyond human ability to manage it,” said Al Zollar, general manager, IBM Tivoli software. “Through service management, companies can gain control over their entire infrastructure, ensure higher quality services to their customers and align technology with business goals.”

New Software, Global Resources for Service Management

The newest member of IBM’s service management software is IBM Tivoli Capacity Process Manager, which helps customers reduce network slowdowns and outages by better predicting computing capacity and performance. IBM’s family of Process Managers automate workflows for functional areas such as availability, release and storage management -- next year, IBM will introduce a new Process Manager with technology from MRO to manage IT, operational and enterprise asset management processes. IBM Tivoli Capacity Process Manager will be available in the fourth quarter of 2006.

IBM also announced a new version of its Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB) software, which includes software acquired from Collation. This is open standards-based software that integrates accurate and up-to-date IT information spread across the enterprise -- including details about servers, storage devices, networks, middleware, applications and data. IBM CCMDB helps companies use IT Infrastructure Library best practices for service management.

IBM’s new Tivoli CCMDB provides customers with an easy-to-use dashboard -- for example, so insurance companies can see how a change in an IT system is preventing a claim from being processed. According to IBM, up to 85 percent of IT problems are caused by changes to application infrastructure, such as security patches -- and not by hardware or application failures. Such changes wreak havoc on interconnected systems and are hard to pinpoint and fix without the centralized view provided by this software. The new version of the IBM CCMDB will be available in October.

IBM is also announcing two new tools, available now, that help customers adopt service management:

-- The IBM Service Management Self-Assessment Toolkit, a no-cost online

tool that helps customers determine where to start and what to focus on

when they move to a service management environment. It rates the

importance of more than 30 process areas, such as how well a change

management process avoids IT glitches.

-- The IBM Tivoli Unified Process Composer, a “starter kit” that provides

detailed information to help organizations adopt service management and

customize specific processes.

To expand the reach of IBM’s middleware, IBM is announcing new resources for technology vendors delivering products and services that complement IBM service management offerings. The IBM Service Management Partner Ecosystem, part of IBM’s PartnerWorld program, includes independent hardware vendors, application software providers, system integrators, distributors, resellers and consultants who will work with IBM to build offerings and skills based on IBM’s open platform. These companies will combine their technologies and expertise to offer customers a variety of complete IBM service management solutions.



IBM is launching this global initiative with more than a dozen business partners including Avnet, Inc., BDNA, Cambia Security, Cisco Systems Inc., Infrastructure Solutions, Inc. (ISI), InterProm USA Corporation, Megasoft Consulting, Nortel, NorthWind Consulting Services, LLC, Oblicore, Solidcore, Tata Consultancy Services and Toshiba Solutions. They will work with IBM to promote and deliver service management solutions based on industry reference models and standards such as WS-Security, SML, CIM, WSDM, ARM and JMX, as well as Web services standards.

IBM is providing a range of resources including hands-on technical support at IBM’s 31 Innovation Centers around the world, which provide developers and business partners with access to IBM’s technical skills, resources and business expertise. IBM is also providing a no-cost developers’ kit that includes documentation and software through the IBM Tivoli Open Process Automation Library, an online catalog of service management product extensions from IBM and its partners.

For more information about IBM, go to www.ibm.com/tivoli.

Contact Information

Laurie Friedman

IBM Media Relations

IBM

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