Tivoli Simplifies Service-Level Monitoring

Software fuses network, systems management tools

April 15, 2002 (Computerworld)

IBM's Tivoli software line is about to get simpler - and it's none too soon for users who have to monitor multiple points of failure in both networks and systems to assure application service levels.

That's the case for David Hamilton, director of telecommunications and technical services at Sutter Health Inc. in Sacramento, Calif., who is struggling to maintain service levels while using multiple, complex monitoring systems.

"It's much more difficult to do that work since we started using [Tivoli in 1998]," he said. "The tools had to get better, and they have to keep getting better."

The new Tivoli monitoring and management tools, to be released this month, include new predictive capabilities, data warehousing functions, a Layer 2 switch analyzer and root-cause analysis tools. They also mark a major effort by IBM to fuse network and systems management into a sensible whole.

"A lot of what we're trying to do is offer a simpler product line," said Carl Kessler, vice president for Tivoli products.

Users and analysts agreed that simplicity was needed.

"For a long time, [Tivoli developers] weren't availing themselves of the tremendous resources of IBM, and they were putting out too many products that didn't fit together," said Valerie O'Connell, an analyst at Aberdeen Group Inc. in Boston.

Hamilton said he doesn't have the budget to scrap existing systems in order to use new monitoring products.

As a beta site for Tivoli's new Service Level Advisor product, Sutter Health needed to draw information from its Hewlett-Packard Co. OpenView network monitoring system, import it into the Tivoli Enterprise Console for systems management and then have that feed the data to the Service Level Advisor.

Hamilton said the upgrade does this process, helping him keep a sharper eye on overall performance and availability of applications. "What I care about is if I'm trending toward a missed service level," he said. "That allows me to fix outages before they occur."

Tim Grieser, an analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass., said he believes the service level performance tools could add a compelling new offering to Tivoli's availability and event management roots.

"Everyone's trying to get to that next abstraction of how systems function from an end-user point of view," he said.

Up and Coming What Tivoli plans to release over the next month: Service Level Advisor Predicts outages and measures how well applications perform from an end-user perspective. Enterprise Data Warehouse Uses IBM DB2 technology to archive monitoring data; comes with all Tivoli products. Directory Server 4.1 Comes with all Tivoli products; adds security and authentication. Switch Analyzer Extends Tivoli product line into data-link layer (Layer 2) functions. Enterprise Console integration with NetView Allows users to perform multilayer root-cause analysis.