IBM Delivers New Service Management Software and Services to Help Organizations Improve Operational Efficiency

ORLANDO, FL - May 2008: At its PULSE 2008 conference, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new software and services designed to help organizations improve the management and delivery of their business and IT services while reducing costs.

IBM Service Management was developed to help address one of the biggest challenges facing clients today: aligning business and IT processes to support overall business goals while creating a greater view of the assets and applications that support those goals and deploying automation to improve efficiency, security and compliance control. The new offerings to help clients include those covering:

Service Delivery and Process Automation
Application and System Management and Monitoring
Service Management Center for System z
Service Management Quick Start and Healthcheck
Tools and Accelerator Services
A recent IBM Global Business Services study of more than 1,100 CEOs showed that organizations are facing faster, broader and more complex change than ever before. The study also indicates that organizations are struggling to manage services in line with these changes. IBM Service Management provides enhanced visibility, control and automation of services so decision makers have the knowledge and capability to deliver services that meet business goals and cost objectives.

“IBM Service Management delivers a unique combination of the software, services and supporting hardware our clients need to improve the management of services across the enterprise,” said Al Zollar, General Manager of IBM Tivoli Software. “Just like Henry Ford did with the manufacture of automobiles in the early 19th Century, the goal of IBM Service Management is to industrialize services by streamlining workflows and processes to provide repeatable, scalable and consistent high-quality results.”

New Service Delivery and Process Automation Offering
IBM’s new Service Delivery and Process Automation solution is built on a set of common capabilities, called the Tivoli Process Automation Platform. It includes new releases of several products that complement IBM Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database, which provides IBM’s vast application discovery capabilities. The platform provides clients with an integrated solution that helps improve their ability to deliver quality, efficient IT services with a common way of defining, refining, linking, and automating tasks and processes in the context of a common, federated and reconciled view of their infrastructure and application relationships. It uses a single user interface to help customers move from one process or task to another.

IBM’s enterprise asset solutions also are built on the Tivoli Process Automation Platform, enabling both IT and Enterprise Asset Maximo customers to automate and converge enterprise asset processes and IT processes, at will, as enterprise assets increasingly become IP-network-enabled. The new products supporting this platform include:

IBM Tivoli Service Request Manager -- offering advanced and flexible service desk and catalog capabilities that help to improve problem resolution time while automating customer interaction with a built-in service catalog which provides on-line order fulfillment to expedite new service requests. It also provides computer telephony interchange support to automate call management and routing, auditable remote desktop takeover, knowledge management and bulletin boards to assist in self diagnosis and problem resolution, integration with Lotus Sametime, and a Web-based catalog with an integrated shopping cart function.
IBM Tivoli Asset Management for IT -- to help manage an IT asset’s lifecycle, optimize sourcing and utilization, reduce asset costs and improve service levels.
IBM Maximo Asset Management -- to help improve the performance of assets and work management processes with comprehensive functionality around asset, work, contract, inventory, procurement and service management processes based on industry best practices. It supports asset lifecycle and maintenance management for all asset types from production equipment to linear assets, and now has new benefits around work management, job plans and reporting.
IBM Tivoli Business Continuity Process Manager -- to automate disaster recovery and improve speed and reliability of recovery tasks. It leverages data provided by automated discovery of IT infrastructure such as z/OS sysplexes, LPARs, z/OS subsystems, and GDPS K-systems, to enable rapid, out- of-the-box implementation of service continuity processes.
New Offerings in Application and System Management and Monitoring
New software and services announced today help companies take advantage of automation to improve management and monitoring of IT systems and applications. These include:

IBM Tivoli System Automation Application Manager -- offering a single point of control for heterogeneous clustering technologies including Veritas Cluster Server, Microsoft Cluster Server, HACMP, and Tivoli System Automation. The user may easily coordinate the starting and stopping of services across zOS, zLinux and distributed platforms to reduce the frequency and duration of planned and unplanned outages.
IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager (ITCAM) -- offering integrated role-based views for administrators of applications, servers and middleware to proactively monitor and maintain profitable customer transactions and services at optimal performance. This can help lower costs associated with managing complex IT infrastructures and offer flexible licensing that allows for changes in projects, middleware and application technology while protecting the investment in IT management tools.
IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Microsoft Applications -- offering components to monitor and manage all Microsoft-based systems, including the operating system, active directory, SQL database, Exchange, .Net and MS Cluster Server.
IBM Event Management and Monitoring Services -- offering design guidance and implementation services with a focus on event management and monitoring for IT systems, IT services and business performance management. It helps clients maximize their event management system and turn multiple monitoring data streams into manageable information.
New Service Management Center for System z Offering
IBM Tivoli Service Management Center for System z is an integrated set of software offerings that provides process automation and service management solutions to make better use of the mainframe’s vast power for tackling business challenges. The updated offering, adding support for Linux-based System z, helps clients benefit from a single, integrated management view of critical applications hosted on System z as well as across the enterprise, integrating IT and business views to help organizations manage the overall service delivery provided by IT in support of business objectives.

Clients can now integrate IT operational management products with service management and process automation solutions for resource discovery, application mapping, service views, and automated processes for change, configuration and business continuity management in a Linux-based mainframe environment. These integrated solutions help bolster System z as the hub for service management and support workload consolidation to the mainframe along with the associated costs savings.

New Service Management Quick Start and Healthcheck Offerings
The new Healthcheck services for service management provide insight into how to better manage services. They use IBM tooling and service management expertise to evaluate clients’ key service management processes and compare those processes with industry best practices, allowing clients to identify where workflows can be streamlined and where technology can be applied to improve service quality.

“Service Management isn’t just about keeping servers up and running, it’s about keeping trains running on time, cash registers operating and factories producing products,” said Jeanine Cotter, IBM Global Services vice president for IT Services and Architecture. “In today’s world, service management is all about keeping a business running with precision while identifying and resolving problems quickly.”

The new Quick Start services for service management leverage IBM’s expertise in the design and deployment of service management technology to help clients quickly deploy automation solutions for processes such as service request management, problem management and change management. As part of this, a new version of IBM Tivoli Unified Process also is available to easily describe processes, roles and tools. The free “starter kit” provides detailed information to help users adopt service management and implement specific processes based on industry best practices. This is aligned with best practices, including ITIL v3, and is the result of the combined efforts of IBM Global Services and IBM Tivoli experts and reflects the experience from thousands of real world engagements. The IBM Tivoli Unified Process can help organizations significantly improve IT operations by enabling users to easily understand processes, the relationships between processes, and the roles and tools involved in an efficient process implementation.

New Tools and Accelerator Services
Recognizing that technology and operations leaders are under pressure to deliver new IT services while also containing costs, IBM is providing a new set of return on investment assets and tools to help evaluate and build business cases to adopt service management. These tools can help organizations to move forward with improved, predictive knowledge on the effects and costs associated with their service management approach. IBM is also making available new accelerator services to help clients improve the speed of software implementation by leveraging IBM’s vast experience in this area. These services use standardized templates and workflows to help clients take advantage of experiences from other implementations.

IBM has built the technology, experience and proven methodology to help clients plan, implement and improve service management. IBM has fully integrated products from more than 20 acquisitions into its Tivoli portfolio, bolstering its ability to address the industry’s widest range of technology to help manage IT operations. IBM assists its clients with over 2,000 worldwide business partners and its Global Technology Services organization, which work closely with Tivoli from development to delivery of new software to help clients quickly deploy and benefit from the IBM Service Management portfolio.