System health is not just about performance and availability, but security as well.  In other words, security cannot be ignored when monitoring the IT environment.  Nor can operating performance be disregarded when the security team is working to mitigate risk and compliance violations.  Want to participate in a dedicated session to define the linkages between security and operations?  Sign up today and join the SecOps discussion group at HP Discover.

I'm happy to announce that we have made the BSM Connector for IBM Tivoli available. This includes integration for Tivoli Enterprise Console and Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus.  Here is more detail about the integration…

Are you integrating BSM with other business management solutions as HPSM, HPOM or third party software? If you are, and these integrated products produce downtime events, you may need to import downtime information from an external system to BSM.  Guest bloggers Avihay Mor & Gilad Ivry from the BSM R&D team discuss how this can be today.

As a follow up to the recent "Script Recycling for Fun and Profit webinar (link)" guest blogger HP APM Global Practice Lead Miron Mizrahi goes a bit further into the mechanics of Reusing test scripts to monitor application performance in production.....

 - Are you attending our HP Software Universe event in Washington this year?

- Are you a current HP Business Service Management (BSM) customer - customer who has one or more products from

HP Business Availability Center (any of these products Business Process Monitor/Real user monitor/Sitescope/Diagnostics/Service Level Management/Transaction Vision)

HP Operations Management Center (Operations Manager, Operations Manager i, any of our SPIs)

 HP Network Management Center (NNMi, Performance SPIs, etc)

- Are you happy with your BSM deployment and want to talk about it?

- Do you want to be seen as a leader and innovative company by having your BSM story quoted in press articles?

If you answered yes, to all of the above, then send an email to: aru@hp.com with your contact information (your name, company, email and phone number). I’ll call you and we can discuss how to give you and your BSM deployment some great exposure.

Thanks
Aruna Ravichandran
Group Product Marketing Manager
Application Performance Management ( part of BAC)
aru@hp.com

By Bryan Dean: BSM Research

In part 1 of this post I introduced some research conducted a couple years ago where we explored the IT professional’s perception of the role that their IT played in the business.

I think the bottom line is whether you are an IT Executive, Director, vendor, or analyst… do not fall into the “monolithic trap” of prescribing one-size-fits-all BSM evolution roadmaps. Clearly establishing and recognizing IT’s role in the business, AND getting all parties on the same page up front is imperative and will save a ton of time, money, and anguish.

You will want to revisit part 1 to get the full discussion, but here is a thumbnail of the core research results, followed by some observations.

The Research Revealed Three Major Segments:

Segment A: “Business Innovation Partner”

• Business & IT equal partners in business process design, measurement, analysis and optimization


• High IT investment to revenue ratio


• Actively transforming IT to interrelate IT services to business processes


• Utilize real-time, automated IT & business measurement; with dynamic capacity adjustment


• ~20% of IT Execs put themselves in this bucket; less than 5% of IT Directors

Segment B: “Business / IT Service Providers”

• Business leaders drive business process design, analysis and optimization; IT partners with business to measure and advise on optimization


• Medium to high IT investment to revenue ratio


• Actively transforming IT service management processes and tools


• Provide IT dashboards & regular service level / business impact reports; respond relatively quickly to adjust capacity


• ~50% of IT Execs put themselves in this bucket; ~ 35% of IT Directors

Segment C: “Operate IT Supporting Business”

• Business drives all aspects of business process design, measurement, analysis and optimization; IT’s job is to run IT well, thus supporting the business


• Low-medium IT investment to revenue ratio


• Targeted improvements in IT process and toolset


• Provide IT performance and availability metrics; adjust capacity via periodic projects


• ~30% IT Execs put themselves in this bucket; ~60% of IT Directors

Observations on Results

Business or IT Perception:

One of the most common responses by our IT Executives and Directors in this research was, “Do you want us to talk about IT’s role in the business from our IT perspective, or from our business leader’s perspective?”

In general, IT believed their contribution to business process design, analysis and optimization was much more significant than their business counterparts believed. When I was in IT (about a century ago), we didn’t have to walk in the snow up hill, both directions… but we did have significant issues with business credibility, and being recognized for our contribution. A million blogs have been written on this subject and how to improve IT’s standing, but the research continues to reflect a difficult reality.

The Spread:

There is a relatively small percentage of IT that put themselves in the “Business Innovation” category, and a surprisingly high number of IT continue to put themselves into the “Operate IT Supporting the Business” category. The percentage of IT that identifies themselves in each different segment may have changed significantly in the last two years, but I doubt it.

The IT Executive - Director Gap:

I wrote a previous BSM blog post on this perception gap, but here is more evidence that IT Executives and the lower level IT operations staff are not on the same page. 60% of the IT Directors put themselves into the “Operate IT Supporting Business” bucket, compared with only 30% of the Executives.

Most of the executives in the research freely admitted that one of their biggest challenges was to change the culture in IT, and get IT operations out of their technology comfort zone. One the other hand, many Directors said they would like to focus on the business, but it wasn’t practical with their workload, staffing, and budget… and the limited hours in the day.

ITSM/BSM Tool & Process Maturity

There was a strong correlation between IT’s identified role in the business, and the progress they had achieved in their ITSM/BSM journey. The “Business Innovation Partners” were consistently early adopters for advanced IT management software tools, very strong at dynamically managing and monitoring end-to-end business/IT services real time, and were interrelating IT performance to business impact. They were also advanced on IT process maturity, but not as noticeably as with their technology.

The “Business / IT Service Providers” were very IT process savvy, and had invested significant budget to in their words, “Get our IT house in order”, so that they could build business trust and operate in a very consistent, cost effective manner. IT software management tools also received significant investment, but aimed more at automating IT processes than interrelating to real time business performance. Although clearly demonstrating Service Levels and IT’s value to business was strong.

The “Operate IT Supporting Business” consistently struggled to prove the business ROI for process and tool investments, so they targeted new spending very carefully, and their progress reflects this investment profile.

The Monolithic Trap

One recommendation, don’t fall into it! Start by assuming everyone is not on the same page, and that everyone does not have the same assumptions about IT’s role in the business... and then you will be ready to make progress on that BSM evolution roadmap.

When developing and marketing products, we often have questions  which can only be answered by going out there and seeing what people are doing. We have a guy on the BSM team who does this for us. His name is Bryan Dean. I've worked with Bryan for many years and I've always been impressed by his objectivity and the insight he brings to his analysis (i.e. he doesn't just present a set of figures - he gets behind the figures).

At the end of last year, we asked Bryan to analyze the top 20-odd BSM deals of 2008. He formed a number of conclusions from this research. One set of conclusions concerned how people "get to BSM" - how they evolve towards an integrated BSM solution. I asked Bryan to help me with a series of posts to share what he learnt about evolutions towards BSM because I think that knowing what our other BSM customers are doing may help you.

________

Mike: Bryan, can you give a summary of what you learnt?

Bryan: There is no one evolution path. It's fascinating to me that a hundred different IT organizations can have virtually the same high-level goals, fundamentally agree on the key factors for success, and yet end up with a hundred unique execution paths.

Before I answer your question, can I create a definition? The term "BSM" is very poorly defined within the IT industry - different vendors have different versions, and so do the industry analysts (in fact, some other research I did last year concluded that very few people had a clear idea of what BSM means).  So, I'd like to introduce the term "Automated Business/IT Service Management"  or AB/ITSM.

Back to your question, I think I can group all the different evolution paths into five key types:  

1. 
   
   ITSM incident, problem change & configuration:  this evolution is driven out of the need for process-driven IT service management with the service desk as a key component


2. 
   
   Consolidated infrastructure event, performance and availability: this is driven by a recognition that having a whole ton of event management and performance monitoring systems is not an efficient way to run IT, and so there is a drive to consolidate them into one console.


3. 
   
   Business service visibility & accountability:  this is more of a top-down approach - start with monitoring the customer's quality of experience and then figure out what needs to happen underneath. This is popular in industries where the "web customer experience" is everything - if it's not good, you lose your business


4. 
   
   Service discovery & model: this is where evolution towards integration is driven from the need for a central model (the CMDB). Often, the main driver for such a central model is the need to control change


5. 
   
   Business transaction management: today, this is the rarest starting point. It's driven by a need to monitor and diagnose complex composite transactions. We see this need most strongly in the financial services sector

Mike: How about the politics of such AB/ITSM projects?  (I don't see the AB/ITSM term taking hold, by the way :-) )

Bryan: Politics (or, most specifically, the motivational side) is important. I think many heavy thinkers in our industry have the mistaken assumption that that there is a single evolution path, controlled from the top on down by the CIO following a master plan. Trying to manage such a serialized, mega project is a huge challenge and too slow, not to mention that 99% of CIO’s are not in the habit of forcing tactical execution edicts on their lieutenants (I know I’ll get some argument on that one :-) ).

What I see from my research is that the most successful IT organizations are those who have figured out how to balance between discrete doable projects, and an overall AB/ITSM end-goal context and roadmap.  Typically, the CIO lays down a high-level vision that ties to specific business results, and then allows key lieutenants to assess and drive a prioritized set of federated, manageable projects that independently drive incremental ROI. Some IT organizations may have a well-defined integrated roadmap, but the majority of IT run federated projects in a fairly disjointed fashion.

These parallel paths are owned by many independent personas within IT, each trying to solve the specific set of issues at hand. For them, being bogged down in how their federated project aligns and integrates with all the other AB/ITSM projects is daunting… if not fatal.

And on reflection this makes sense to me - the human side of things plays a large role in such endeavors.

Mike: What do you mean?

Bryan: IT organizations of all shapes and sizes have goals to reduce costs, increase efficiency, improve business/IT service quality, and mitigate risk all while applying technology in an agile way to boost business performance.   What I find interesting is how specific, funded initiatives are created by specific personas to achieve the goals.

In future posts, I will share some specific examples of how customers evolved through these paths, the key driver personas, the core motivations and how these paths come together.