IBM Tivoli Pushes Business Impact Management

IBM's Tivoli Software

With Tivoli Monitoring 5.1, Tivoli is delivering on plans unveiled earlier this year to push into business impact management, an approach to network management that provides insight into how problems with individual network devices and resources impact service delivery.

"A message queue filling up is not a big deal normally, unless that message queue is bringing down your new online order Web-based application. Then it's critical," said Bob Madey, vice president of performance and availability products at IBM Tivoli, Armonk, N.Y.

One solution provider said business impact management is becoming increasingly important to customers.

"It's very important because business folks are getting much more involved in IT decisions on a day-to-day basis and they want information presented in a way that's meaningful to them," said Steve Lenhardt, client services director at Maryville Technologies, a solution provider based in St. Louis, Mo. "They're looking at their investment and scrutinizing where the dollars are going," he said.

As a result of a new architecture based on resource modeling, Tivoli Monitoring 5.1 provides more granular root-cause analysis and can automatically take steps to fix problems, Madey said.

For example, in a scenario where an online ordering application is compromised because the application server's connection buffers are filling up, Tivoli Monitoring will automatically check the server's CPU utilization and the application's memory allocation. If it finds ample capacity, it will increase the buffer pool to allow more users to connect, monitor the system to make sure CPU utilization doesn't cross pre-established thresholds, and return the connection buffer pool to its normal state once user demand dies down, Madey said.

"At the same time, it can notify an operator or user that, 'Hey, I've taken this corrective action, the server has fixed and healed itself, and I've restored the values after it was all done.' That's autonomic computing," Madey, said.

The company also unveiled new tools for the Tivoli Monitoring suite that monitor middleware servers and applications from vendors such as BEA Systems, Oracle, SAP and Siebel, as well as IBM's own WebSphere products.

In addition, Tivoli Access Manger 3.9, a tool for integrating security into e-business infrastructure, now includes out-of-the-box support for SAP Enterprise Portal, Oracle 9iAS, Epicentric Foundation Server, and IBM Lotus Domino, Sametime, Quickplace and iNotes.

The enhanced support decreases the amount of low-level integration work solution providers have to perform, Madey said.

"It increases their productivity and allows them to move on to higher-value services," he said.