Managed Objects Misses the Mark???

The IT Skeptic Blog really takes Managed Objects to task on their latest offering called MyCMDB.  I have to say I really agree with nearly everything he points out in his post.  This sounds like some "cheap and cheerful" code thrown over the fence to play on the Web 2.0 craze.  Where is the real substance???...missing in action it seems.  It is funny that they bring this offering out after negatively commenting on other service managment web 2.0 features...dismissing them as visual candy and nothing else.  It sounds like they finally figured out that the other were right and reversed their direction.  Maybe that is why the hired a new VP of Product Strategy....hhhmmmmm....go figure!  :)

IT's About Uptime Blog: Doug McClure's Thoughts on BSM

Great post on the "It's About Uptime" Blog that includes a interview they had with Doug McClure  in which he  gives his thoughts on BSM, ITSM and Change and Release Management.  In this discussion he describes the affect of Web 2.0 and social networking areon the BSM market and whether it is relevant for customers or not.  There is much more...  It is a good read!

Simplicity Sits Side By Side in Importance With Price

There have been some great articles (see the one described below and click on the link to read) of late in regards to our price proposition, but I would like to emphasize our simplicity as well.  Complexity ids the enemy of all IT management SMB and Enterprise folks as well.  It drive up costs associated with deployment, integration, support and training.  Often times the soft dollars associated with a technology are 2 or 3 times higher than than license price for the software and hardware. So while many will focus on the purchase price I would suggest everyone do a more thorough analysis of all the costs.  The results may surprise you!

FireScope BSM: BE Shatters the Costly, Complex Service Management Paradigm — FireScope Inc., a leader in enterprise-level business service management (BSM) solutions, today announced the launch of FireScope BSM: Business Edition, a revolutionary new simple, affordable and quick-to-deploy BSM solution designed to shatter the barriers to BSM for the SMB marketplace.  FireScope BSM: BE is built from the same enterprise-tested framework as FireScope's BSM: Enterprise Edition, optimized for the SMB market, and features a starting price of $2,450.

More Changes For The Old Guard!

BMC is employing yet another BSM strategy...does this mean that the old strategy was losing steam???  Read the article on BMC new positioning and decide for yourself.  In my opinion, The old guard continues to acquire or revise their service management strategies to fight off emerging competitors and ensure their message continues to resonate with their audience.  This space is fun!

The New Track for BSM - Bring Forth the SMB

Next week the SMB will finally be able to realize the value of true service management.  They two would like to have service views, real-time dashboards,  business impacts and  aggregated reporting.  I agree with Paul Burns, Senior Analyst with EMA, "“There has been a myth that only the largest companies require the integrated business metrics and IT data provided by BSM. The truth is that the smaller businesses have not had access to solutions tuned to their requirements around purchase cost, management staffing and time to value.”.  I just think why buy Network Management and other types of management products when starting next week you can have BSM next week for the same price?   Just doesn't make sense to not have the additional functionality, power and flexibility of BSM if you are in the market for management views of your company's IT operations and services.  Take a moment out of your busy day and read the following article titled The World Needs “BSM Lite”, currently in Network World...it is a great read!  Enjoy...  :)

Times Are A Changing In The Service Management Space

To quote Bob Dylan "Times they are a changing", especially in the service management space.  New innovations and emerging companies are starting to make noise.  Acquisitions are picking up and web 2.0 is infiltrating the ranks.  You ask why???  Well, people are tired of re-treaded network management products that are re-designated as Business Service Management ("BSM") products but still have largely the same functionality, huge training hurdles, high price, proprietary technology and long implementation cycles.  The IT Press has increasingly been reporting on the unhappiness of corporate IT staff with the selection and  state of the service management market.   Well, eventually as with all industries and sectors times will change, business models will change and leaders will change.  So, as many incumbents ignore or cling to their aging business models and slow changing pricing schemes, there are those waiting who will be change agents and do and go places where others fear to go.     As will all things time continues to move forward and innovation can not be stopped.  It is inevitable and coming sooner than most of the incumbents had wished.  So...stay tuned and sign up to be part of the new era!  Remember this is just the beginning...now it gets fun!  :)

Great Blog On The Service Management Space

If you have not been to Doug McClure's Blog...well you are missing something.  His insights and news regarding this important space is refreshing, revealing and informative.   Give it a try!

The State Of The Systems Management Ecosystem??? Interesting...

This is a very interesting article from SearchData.com titled "The Evolving Systems Management Ecosystem", it has some very interesting insights into Open source systems management vendors and their intentions going forward on supporting an open source version of their products.   The pendulum continues to swing back and forth on this issue.   I especially agree with the comment that one vendor cannot provide the entire spectrum of functionality needed for most customers...never have there been truer words.  Anyway, it is a good read.

CIO Dashboards Are Here Today

Read a good article on CIO dashboards called "Hunting The Elusive CIO Dashboard" in Information Week.  It seeks to describe the elusiveness of the due to the complexity of the data required to provide KPIs that can provide the business impact of performance, security and availability issues within an enterprise.  They talk about how we are approximately 18 months out from having these capabilities...yet we have them at FireScope and have had them for a while.

It is important to note that using web services and other technologies can enhance the ability for users to define the KPIs that important to them and then to visualize it on a single dashboard.  While not a trivial process it is definitely possible today by FireScope and others.  Improvements are definitely possible but the underpinnings and framework are available today.  Try it....you will like it!

Innovation: Van Halen and BSM

I went to the Van Halen concert here in Dallas last night and saw a great concert (pic I took with my iPhone included).  While driving home after the concert I was reminded by several of the people I went with...how having David Lee Roth back with the band was fantastic.   They also noted and I concur that Wolfgang Van Halen (15 year-old son of Eddie Van Halen) did a great job as well...what a exciting addition.  The gross receipts so far on this tour is over 56 million dollars...with many dates left.  This shows how the innovative changes and additions have brought positive results to a 30-year old band and it has made me reflect on how driving change and innovation can have a dramatic affect on many mediums.

BSM much like Van Halen is bringing innovation and change into the aging space of network monitoring and management with great results.  So, by changing up how IT operations look at their IT assets and aligning them via service groupings...IT operations groups can now bring in business data and monitor and manage their networks and IT assets in a way that is strategic to their business. Just like how Van Halen brought in Dave and Wolfgang and it produced great results...Bringing in business data and correlating it with IT operations data can produce amazing results to many enterprises.   

So pick up your guitar...ummmm I mean your keyboard and get rockin.  :)

A BSM Primer from Baseline Magazine - Good stuff!

I ran across this BSM Primer from Baseline Magazine.   It provides a summarized quick view of Business Service Management including some of the vendors and their products.....hope you enjoy.

ITIL Can Be Scary?

This article from Network World titled "10 Reasons ITIL Spooks IT Managers" is a must read for those comtemplating using ITIL in the future as it points out at least 10 reasons that ITIL can bite you back.  Issues like multi-year commitment, Executive support and user/community pushback to name a few issues are illuminated and describe in detail.   This article should help those that are new to ITIL too.

Understanding Service Portfolios in ITIL 3.0

This is a good article about service strategy using ITIL 3.0.  Alex Hernandez has a insightful approach to approaching ITIL 3.0 and creating value through it's use.  He points out that once you have the Total Cost of Ownership ("TCO") figured out for a given service you can add it to your service catalog within your service portfolio and help the organization understand the value of a service to the organization.  He makes several other valuable points in this article.  Enjoy!

The ITIL Request Continues To Evolve And Grow

Check out this enlightening article by ITSM Watch columnist Rob England on the evolution of the humble request from no standing at all to an equal peer of the Incident in the latest version of ITIL. The request continues to grow in importance with each new version of ITIL, writes ITSM Watch columnist Rob England. With the recent release of ITIL v3, the differences and changes should be noted when using ITIL for your service management framework. This article will help illuminate the changes and discuss the affect they will have on existing ITIL-based operations. Take careful note of his points regarding the SLA(s) as this is a point of continuing confusion for many. By the way ITSM watch is a great source of information on IT service management.

HP's New Approach To BSM - Groundbreaking or not?

Here is an interesting article on HP's new approach to BSM via the aggregation of some of their Openview elements with the Mercury software acquired earlier this year.  Their description of BSM does not really match up with what the analysts are saying though.   The analysts are prescribing to a BSM definition that takes business data and couples it with IT operations data in a manner that shows the true impact of IT operations on the business and vice versa.   I think this latter definition is revolutionary and insightful, while the description in the article is more of the same, in other words incrementally evolutionary...but not ground breaking from a customer's perspective.  What do you think?

First Multi-Vendor IT Management Data (CMDB) Release

The CMDB Federation (CMDBf) working group has announced it has published it first release of an industry-wide specification for sharing information between Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) and other management data repositories (MDRs), such as asset management systems and service desks.

The CMDBf was founded in April 2006, and today consists of industry leaders BMC Software, CA, Fujitsu Limited, HP, IBM and Microsoft.  Their goal was to create a universal specification for federating and accessing multi-vendor data.   This first release should provide insight into how neutral this specification will truly be...as other multi-vendor technology specifications have a mixed record on their independence and the true value delivered to the marketplace.   Let's hope that this first release is the beginning of  a truly federated CMDB as it would provide great benefit and utility to many enterprises.

HP acquires Opsware and Neoware - A New ITSM Strategy?

HP continues to acquire software companies in a move to try and reposition themselves with offerings for IT operations both from a automation and service management viewpoint.  It could be a risky proposition as trying to merge all of these different softwares and organizations into a cohesive offering has not been easy for others that have tried it.   HP has a better track record than most but all eyes will be on them as the try to transform their confusing and aging Openview line of products into a new set of cohesive service management products.  The acquisition of Opsware and Neoware is an obvious move to just that.   Only time will tell as the roll-up of Mercury, Openview, Opsware and Neoware should be interesting and true test of HP's determination to have a relevant service management offering.

FireScope - Operations Made Simple

As the President of FireScope...I feel it is my duty to plug our product.  Not just for the obvious reason,  but also because I believe it really does solve IT operations issues.  Give it try!  He is a quick summary on our line of FireScope appliances.  The FireScope IT Operations solution provides clients with a flexible, technology-agnostic solution that significantly improves visibility into current and trending health and security of the enterprise, all in real-time. With FireScope, everyone from C-Level officers to system administrators can track up-to-the-second key performance metrics, security events, spot emerging trends and make faster IT operations decisions. By combining application aggregation, analytics, end-user dashboards and tools for collaboration in one plug-and-play appliance, FireScope can be deployed at a cost that is at least 80% less than other approaches to Business Service Management and IT Operations Management.