From Event to Action: Accelerate Your Decision Making with Real-Time Automation
Unleash the hidden power of IT
1. IBM Systems and Technology
White Paper
Unleash the hidden power of IT
Achieving business results through comprehensive
systems management
2. 2 Achieving business results through comprehensive systems management
Unlock the full
power of IT through
simplified, efficient
and comprehensive
management of the
technology environment.
Then put it to work for
the business.
3. Systems and Technology 3
Contents One innovative way that technology can contribute to the
bottom line is by enabling the automation of business
4 Virtualization is only the beginning processes. For example, self-service portals can allow customers
5 The IBM approach: Top-to-bottom and end-to-end to manage their own accounts, thereby reducing the cost of
customer service. Or, a business can improve internal efficiency
6 Addressing key business imperatives by making new services available in hours instead of days or
7 Start off on the right foot with IBM systems management weeks – effectively putting control of computing resources into
the hands of line-of-business users instead of making them
7 Find out more submit requests to IT managers.
The possibilities are many; the common thread is an IT
To compete in today’s sophisticated marketplace, businesses environment that closely couples technology with automa-
are viewing the strategic role of IT in a new light. CFOs are tion and tightly integrated business processes across the
looking for ways to intelligently reduce costs – avoid new enterprise. IBM calls this Integrated Service Management –
costs, reduce existing ones and balance expenditures against enabling service innovation by providing Visibility. Control.
the value they create. CIOs are seeking to create dynamic, Automation. across smarter business infrastructures and the
TM
real-time access to innovative new services, achieve dramatic end-to-end service chain. Integrated Service Management
gains in productivity and manage the new risks of an brings together flexible, closely managed IT, highly automated
increasingly connected and collaborative new world. Both workload management and process integration to transform
are turning to IT to provide answers. the way technology is employed to serve business needs. It is
a game-changing concept because it allows business needs
Driven by these new imperatives, IT’s traditional function rather than technology concerns to drive IT service delivery.
of providing behind-the-scenes support for existing business That’s important because it takes traditional systems-first
processes is evolving rapidly. It is emerging from its support thinking that puts IT constraints ahead of business goals and
role and becoming the centerpiece of innovation and real-time turns it on its head.
business agility that drives profit and growth. The focus is less
on individual, single-purpose platforms and more on a holistic An important technology transformation that makes
view of how the IT environment can be used to improve Integrated Service Management possible is systems
service, bring new offerings to market faster and respond to management. This is a key part of the IBM vision, in which
changing business conditions more quickly. What’s needed the entire infrastructure – regardless of manufacturer or
to reach these goals is more than advanced technology; it’s a device type – becomes part of a unified, integrated whole
way to manage that technology in new ways that are more that is visible and closely controlled from end to end. With it,
efficient, more flexible, less expensive and more productive. businesses can gain the competitive advantage they seek by
improving service, while reducing cost and managing risk.
4. 4 Achieving business results through comprehensive systems management
When combined with adaptive, virtualized technology Virtualization is only the beginning
resources that can be readily allocated and repurposed Deploying technology cannot, by itself, create the capabilities
according to need, systems management can create unprece- needed to achieve a fully controlled, transparent infrastruc-
dented levels of business agility, as shown in Figure 1. ture. Many businesses have already invested in virtualization
technology and are seeing major cost savings; but with systems
management that enables the business to utilize those assets
more effectively, their true potential for business value creation
can be unleashed.
Server Agility Virtualization can drive major savings
Storage Network
Consolidate Manage Automate Optimize The potential to reduce infrastructure costs through virtualiza-
Resources Workloads Processes Delivery
tion is dramatic. Third-party data shows that consolidating
125 mixed-vendor x86 servers onto 19 IBM System x® servers
can yield direct savings – server costs, power and facilities, and
server software – of more than US$2.6 million dollars. When the
savings in systems management labor costs are considered,
the savings grow to almost US$4 million – a total cost reduction
of more than 60 percent.1
Improved Improved IT staff Consistent and Self provisioned
efficiency and productivity repeatable processes by users based
utilization of with integrated based on best on business
IT resources systems practices, business imperatives,
management priorities and service unconstrained by IBM systems management plays a major role in making IT
dashboard level agreements physical barriers more efficient, responsive and less costly by enabling greater
or locations
transparency and control for administrators. Beyond this, by
changing the way IT is employed by the business, it forms
Figure 1: To move beyond resource consolidation and achieve the optimized
service delivery that yields business agility– and therefore competitive the backbone of Integrated Service Management – and that is
advantage – sophisticated systems management is needed. the key to the competitiveness that company leadership seeks.
Virtualization is just the first step along that path.
5. Systems and Technology 5
The IBM approach: Top-to-bottom
The implications of Integrated Service Management and end-to-end
Integrated Service Management is firmly rooted in advanced, Most IT environments are marked by a collection of
effective systems management that provides visibility, disparate systems, managed by dedicated tools. This makes
automation and control of the IT environment. This example management complicated, time-consuming and inefficient.
illustrates how Integrated Service Management can leverage IBM overcomes this challenge by combining platform
virtualized infrastructure assets and automated processes to simplification, management and integration with complete
increase business agility while reducing cost and risk. visibility, control and automation of the extended infrastructure
Business need and associated processes.
A consumer products company launches an ambitious, but
risky, promotional campaign that incorporates real-time The IBM approach to systems management is based on an
social networking, interactive websites and viral video. A rapid understanding of the inherent diversity of data centers. It
and significant increase in network traffic is expected and stands apart because it allows the full management of the
must be accommodated at minimum cost, without reducing environment from end to end. Through a combination of
service levels. IBM Systems Director and IBM Tivoli,® it is possible to
Traditional response manage everything in the data center – servers, storage and
Business managers create projections of the required load network devices from any vendor, from x86 to mainframes
and submit requests to IT six months in advance to allow time and from individual components to large-scale, virtualized
for procurement, installation, testing and configuration. Staff infrastructure assets. That breadth and depth of coverage
resources are diverted from other tasks, excess capacity is is essential, because partial, disconnected solutions cannot
deployed and there is still a risk that it won’t be sufficient. deliver the levels of service improvement, cost reduction
With virtualized infrastructure and risk containment required by the business.
Business managers request resource reallocation from IT
managers two months in advance. Manual provisioning, Systems Director provides in-depth management of IBM
configuration and testing are accomplished, with ongoing hardware, while Tivoli “manager of managers” tools handle
monitoring to deal with unanticipated demand. Even with virtu- IT resources across the entire multivendor infrastructure
alization, staff resources are tied up and response is slow. and closely integrate them with business processes. This
With Integrated Service Management two-pronged approach is what makes IBM systems
The capacity is automatically provisioned using virtualized management so effective, because it enables a level of seam-
server, storage and network resources controlled by business less, comprehensive oversight and control that cannot be
processes that are accessible to line-of-business users. duplicated using traditional methods.
Changes in load are handled autonomously and transparently
without intervention by IT staff. The promotion becomes part
of the normal workflow.
6. 6 Achieving business results through comprehensive systems management
IBM Systems Director addresses these issues by streamlining
infrastructure administration through the simplification and
IBM • Integrated control via consolidation of management functions. It offers centralized
Infrastructure IBM System Software discovery and control from a “single pane of glass” that gives
including IBM Systems Director
administrators the insight and ability to manage the infra-
®
structure far more effectively and efficiently than is possible
IBM Tivoli:
Manager of using traditional methods. Systems Director can dramatically
managers increase IT administrator productivity by reducing or
eliminating the need for multiple, disconnected management
Third-party • Servers/storage/
tools and manual processes. Rather than manage servers,
infrastructure network/power cooling storage and networks in isolation, all can be viewed and
• Vendor-agnostic managed together, and many tasks that once occupied valuable
staff time – such as provisioning a new server – can be accomp-
lished much more quickly and simply, with fewer personnel.
Systems management can also help to control costs by allowing
Figure 2: The IBM approach to systems management is both inclusive and
comprehensive. It provides extensive control of IBM IT assets through IBM the business to use its infrastructure assets more efficiently.
System Software offerings such as Systems Director, while overall control of For example, it can reduce the number of servers needed to
the entire infrastructure is handled by Tivoli. In this way, businesses realize
the best of both worlds – management that covers diverse infrastructures, meet demands by enabling automated workload management
combined with control all the way down to the component level. that reallocates resources autonomously according to need.
Or, by leveraging detailed historical data, energy usage trends
can be identified and used to actively control consumption,
Addressing key business imperatives lowering the performance of processors – and the cooling they
IBM systems management is a continuum – a set of building require – during periods of low load.
blocks that form the foundation for optimized service delivery
and Integrated Service Management. Along the way, it targets Risk management is also a key concern. By providing real-time
the most important challenges facing business managers today. visibility into the state of the infrastructure, Systems Director
can help administrators understand and target vulnerabilities
For the business to improve market share, boost customer more quickly and effectively. Accurate historical data helps
retention and satisfaction, and gain and maintain a competitive managers analyze trends and take preventive action before
edge, it must continuously work to improve both the quality issues develop, while also providing the information needed to
and availability of service. Isolated systems, complex help ensure compliance.
management processes and tools, a lack of visibility into the
infrastructure and reliance on manual intervention all stand in Leveraging advanced features built into IBM hardware also
the way of keeping the infrastructure up and running. enables proactive management – heading problems off even
before they occur and maximizing service levels. Managers
can be automatically notified by smartphone of potential
hardware problems, log on remotely and take corrective
measures to keep the systems running smoothly. The problem
is avoided and users don’t even need to know it existed. In an
era where downtime is simply not an option, that can be a
major advantage.
7. Systems and Technology 7
reduce the cost of power and cooling, allocate resources to
handle sudden spikes in demand – anything the business
Addressing key business imperatives
requires of its IT department. That’s the behind-the-scenes
IBM systems management can transform business operations key to making the business more competitive.
with dramatic results while laying the groundwork for greater
competitiveness through Integrated Service Management:
Start off on the right foot with
Service improvement
IBM systems management
IBM and Nokia delivered a smarter promotion engine that
Today’s environment is a rich source of opportunity, but
helped Globe Telecom streamline its business operations,
only for those able to take advantage of it. Driving efficiency,
generate new revenue and increase promotional effectiveness
by 600 percent. The time and cost of developing new promo- which has been an overarching theme for businesses
tions has been reduced by 95 percent, giving their marketing challenged by rising costs, can only go so far in creating
department the means to be more proactive and effective.2 competitiveness. The world has changed, and so have the
expectations of the marketplace.
Cost reduction
Getronics’ new utility hosting service helps staff rapidly
To achieve the agility, growth, maximum profitability and
switch cloud environments on and off, and proactively increase
capacity as needed. Built on a dynamic infrastructure that
ROI that the business needs, managers must deliver new and
employs IBM Integrated Service Management solutions for better services – while managing cost, risk and complexity.
provisioning and storage management, it has enabled an The same solution can address all of these imperatives at once.
80 percent reduction in management costs per server, per That solution is comprehensive IBM systems management.
year and has reduced time-to-market for new services from It is the key enabler that makes it all possible by going beyond
four weeks to just a few hours.3 traditional, isolated systems management – spanning the
Risk management infrastructure to enable service innovation and optimization
INTTRA implemented a robust storage solution with a for the whole enterprise.
“single pane of glass” interface that manages all storage
operations regardless of data type. The unified console For decades, IBM has been helping businesses around the
eliminates layers of management tools, which simplifies admin- world get the most from their technology investments and that
istration and greatly reduces the risk of management error. experience has yielded unparalleled business transformation
In addition, together with SAN volume controllers at the com- and industry expertise. That’s what sets the IBM portfolio
pany’s primary and backup locations, the solution increases apart: The perspective and insight to deliver solutions that
IT efficiency– reducing the data center footprint by 50 percent drive results by addressing the real-world challenges faced by
and energy costs by 30 percent.4 businesses today.
Find out more
What makes IBM systems management so compelling is its Let IBM show you how to leverage systems management to
comprehensiveness—the combination of information-based drive business success on a smarter planet. To learn more about
insight and the tools to put it to use. With IBM Systems how the comprehensive portfolio of IBM systems management
Director and Tivoli, managers can see what’s happening and infrastructure solutions combine to unlock the true
across the entire IT environment, all in one place and in business value of IT, contact your IBM representative today.
real time, and combine it with historical data to develop a
full understanding of every aspect of the data center. This Visit us at:
knowledge can be leveraged using IBM systems management ibm.com/systems/software
tools to fully optimize the infrastructure – head off problems ibm.com/tivoli
before they occur, maximize utilization, improve performance,
