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Streamlining IT Management

Page 2

4 Hidden Opportunities for IT Efficiency ImprovementsPage 7

Product Spotlight: 6 Tools to Improve Your IT ManagementPage 13

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October 2014

Cloud computing, mobility, social technology, DevOps, embedded intelligence, and big data bring complexity to the datacenter. To cope, IT leaders are turning to new IT service management tools to help them analyze and optimize their on-premises, cloud, and hybrid operations while accelerating their pace of innovation.

Smarter IT: Optimize IT Delivery, Accelerate Innovation

UBM Tech October 20142 SSS

Streamlining ITManagement

Recent innovations in information technology have led to radical changes. Cloud computing, for example, was virtually unheard of a decade ago, yet companies are on track to spend more than $100 billion on cloud

services in 2014, according to IDC.

Other disrupting trends are occurring at the same time:

Mobile devices have become pervasive: According to Pew Research, 58% of Americans now own a smartphone, and 42% own a tablet.

Social technology has transformed the way people connect to each other, both at home and at work, with 67% of Americans currently using

social networking and 79% of North American businesses having deployed

social technology.


Continuous delivery and other DevOps practices are transforming application devel-

opment; 21% of participants in an Information-

Week survey indicated that they have already

implemented DevOps, and another 21%

expect to do so by 2015.

Embedded intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) are also on the rise, with 75% of

global companies either actively exploring or

already using IoT technology.

Big data continues to represent a challenge and an opportunity, with companies expected

to spend $14 billion on big-data technology in

2014, a 30% increase over 2013.

Many IT teams are struggling to deal with

the added complexity these new innovations

bring while maintaining their current systems.

For many organizations, preserving the status

quo consumes the bulk of the IT budget.

A new generation of solutions promises

to help IT leaders address these challenges

by streamlining IT management. These tools

work across distributed and cloud computing

environments, giving enterprises an end-to-

end view of all their IT operations and the

insight they need to optimize IT operations.

The Role of Analytics in IT OperationsMost IT managers are familiar with big-data

analytics, and many are actively working with

business managers on big-data projects. Some

have also realized that big-data analytics can

be very valuable to IT operations. After all, IT

systems generate plenty of data in the form of

logs, alerts, metrics, and help desk requests.

IT operations analytics software can help IT

managers make sense of all this disparate data

Streamling IT Management

How Consolidated Communications uses analytics to avoid outages.

UBM Tech4 SSS

and spot emerging trends, preventing trouble

before its reported. The best software also

allows IT to drill down into known problems

and find root causes faster.

The right IT analytics software can reduce the

amount of time IT personnel spend on problem

resolution, thus reducing IT maintenance costs.

In addition, it improves uptime and increases

satisfaction for users both inside and outside the

organization.

In order to achieve these goals, IT leaders

should look for analytics and monitoring tools

that are:

Consumable. The best IT operations analytics tools are easy to try and deploy, and many run

in the cloud. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools

allow companies to experiment with the tech-

nology and offer simplified pricing that is easy

to predict and understand.

Intelligent. Analytics tools must be able to handle massive amounts of data. The best tools

do more than just integrate information they

also provide insights that help prevent outages

and resolve issues quickly.

Integrated. The growth of hybrid cloud computing has made it very difficult for

organizations to get a complete, end-to-end

perspective on all their systems running in

private clouds, public clouds, virtualized, and

traditional server environments. These com-

panies need comprehensive analytics tools

that perform multiple functions.

The Next Generation of IT OptimizationAnalytics can help companies reduce the time

spent on maintenance activities, but IT optimi-

zation tools can take them even further. These

optimization tools serve two primary goals:

1. They help companies reduce burdens on IT staff and reduce IT maintenance spending.

2. They help IT please users through better performance and stability.

IT optimization tools fall into two categories:

Automation tools allow on-premises, cloud, and hybrid systems to run themselves and

allow users to self-serve as much as possible.

21% of participants in one InformationWeek survey had already

implemented DevOps, and another 21%

expect to do so by 2015.


October 2014


The Rise of the Hybrid Cloud

In the early days of cloud computing, industry experts debated the relative merits of public clouds, which were managed by a third party, and private clouds, which

allowed companies to retain control of their infrastructure.

These days, a growing number of organizations are

finding themselves with hybrid cloud environments, using

both private and public cloud services. In fact, a 2014

report from Technology Business Research found that 20%

of large organizations had integrated two or more cloud

environments to create a hybrid cloud.

Industry experts agree that the hybrid cloud trend will

continue to grow for the foreseeable future. Analysts

at TechNavio predict that the worldwide global hybrid

cloud market will increase more than 30% per year

through 2018. And other market researchers anticipate

that nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud

deployments within the next few years.

These can include tools for scheduling

workloads and cloud orchestration tools

for configuring, deploying, and managing

resources.

Tools for application performance management (APM) and infrastructure performance management allow IT to

fine-tune hardware and software settings

in order to guarantee maximum uptime.

The latest tools work across traditional,

private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid

architectures to enable greater flexibility

and better visibility.

IT optimization tools ideally are:

Consumable. Optimization tools must be easy to try and deploy. The best can

run in the cloud and have usage-based

pricing that provides significant savings

over traditionally deployed software.

Intelligent. Look for software with built-in features that will reduce the

amount of time required to deploy the

tool and use it effectively.

Integrated. In a hybrid setting, a single transaction may touch multiple environ-

ments. Siloed tools can delay problem

resolution and hamper the ability of IT

to ensure that service level agreements

(SLAs) are met.

Innovation in IT ManagementWhen both analytics and optimization

tools are in place, IT departments can

shrink the amount of time they spend

dealing with maintenance activities.

That frees them up to explore innovative

technologies and methodologies that

can result in additional benefits for their

organization.

The most innovative IT organizations

are not merely handling the complexity

introduced by current technology trends.

Theyre capitalizing on the opportunities

those trends present. Instead of merely



enabling cloud computing, many are becom-

ing cloud-first organizations. They are moving

to the cloud, particularly platform-as-a-service

(PaaS) and hybrid clouds, in record numbers.

Innovative organizations are also opening

the door to more collaboration among staff

members in different departments.

By embracing DevOps practices that blur the

lines between development and operations, for

example, organizations can address user needs

faster. Some are giving line-of-business users

greater control over applications and infrastruc-

ture, bringing more agility to the organization

as a whole. In fact, the IBM Center for Applied

Insights reports that 36% of cloud services are

managed by line-of-business teams.

These practices speed application devel-

opment, particularly when used with agile

development methodologies. Continuous

delivery and other agile approaches help de-

velopers get new features and updates to users

on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. This

responsive development environment allows

companies to adapt to market conditions faster.

Creating More Value IT innovation improves the ability to satisfy

customers. Maximizing uptime, meeting users

needs quickly, and turning out new and better

applications can help the entire organizations

do a better job of fulfilling its mission.

Given the complexity in modern IT environ-

ments, IT leaders need help streamlining their

operations. Analytics, automation, and perfor-

mance management tools are providing that

assistance and making it easier to capitalize on

the latest technology trends. p


How Claranet uses analytics to improve IT operations agility and efficiency for its customers


4Hidden Opportunities for

ImprovementsIT Efficiency

Doing more with less is a constant mantra in IT departments, and most IT managers have already tried the obvious ways to improve efficiency.

However, they may not have considered some of the hidden places where

outdated or inefficient tools may be adding to the burdens on IT staff.

Because every datacenter is different, there is no magic formula. But some of

the biggest efficiency gains can be found in four key areas: operations, applica-

tion performance and infrastructure management, automation, and analytics.

1Operations Several common situations can prevent IT operations from achieving their maximum efficiency. One of the most likely is the use of multiple, siloed IT management tools and dashboards. As IT infrastructure grows and

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evolves over time, many organizations invest

in a disparate set of tools that address a specific

problem or a specific piece of the environment.

Although each tool may do its assigned tasks

well, having to use many different tools to man-

age hardware or track down problems can sap

time from the IT staff.

Another common problem is that some IT

management tools lack the scalability they

need to deal with an organizations growth.

As the datacenter grows, these solutions run

slower and slower and become less effective.

IT departments also struggle to prioritize

their activities and response to help desk calls.

And many IT organizations complain that they

are spending too much time putting out fires.

With no way to predict and correct problems,

IT staff can only respond to help desk calls

and troubleshoot problems rather than

prevent them.

In addition, IT departments often say

that their infrastructure projects fall behind

schedule. Unforeseen problems crop up

that require additional time and effort and take

staff away from other activities.

IT service management tools can help predict

and prevent problems, resolve issues faster,

reduce costs, and improve IT agility.

IBM data shows that companies that have

invested thoughtfully in new IT service man-

agement technologies reduced their overall

event load by 30%, reduced the number of

events IT staff handled by 10%, and increased

mean time to repair by 10%.

In addition, the tools helped organizations

reduce the time they spent doing historical

event analysis by up to 75% and decrease the

time they spent creating dashboards by 60%.

Overall, these operations gains resulted in

75% lower cost of ownership and efficiency

gains of 15-30%.

Are Your IT Operations as Efficient as Possible? Key Questions to Ask

Do you have a single, consolidated view of your application and infrastructure management solutions?

When multiple problems occur, how do you determine which is the most important?

Do you usually discover IT problems before end users complain?

Do you have a process for maximizing IT efficiency?

Are you spending too much on break/fix activity?

Are you able to keep up with infrastructure and application changes?

4 Hidden Opportunities for IT Efficiency Improvements

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2 Application and Infrastructure Performance Management Many of the challenges companies face with application performance management

(APM) and infrastructure management are very

similar to challenges related to IT operations.

For example, many enterprises say that siloed

tools mean they dont have an end-to-end view

of their business applications. In particular, they

often lack visibility into third-party or middle-

ware applications, which can make trouble-

shooting difficult.

And, just like the operations staff, developers

are spending too much time troubleshooting.

Instead of spending their time writing code,

they spend hours trying to resolve performance

issues that could be easily handled if they had

better tooling.

In addition, companies often experience

multiple delays when rolling out new fea-

tures or a new application. While these sorts

of problems are common, better tooling can

help prevent them. Specifically, the latest

APM and infrastructure management solu-

tions can improve application uptime and

ensure that IT departments meet SLAs.

IBM reports that companies that deployed

these tools improved the availability of mission-

critical applications by 60-90%. They reduced

their outages by 30-40%, and outages that did

occur were 50% shorter than before.

Many of these next-generation tools are

available on a SaaS basis. IBM noted that this

pricing model helped companies reduce their

total cost of ownership for APM and infra-

structure management tools by up to 55%,

even as they were investing in tools with

more comprehensive capabilities.

Could You Benefit From Application and Infrastructure Performance Management? Can your IT operations team view the entire

application infrastructure when trying to diagnose performance problems?

Are you planning to roll out new applications in the next 3-12 months?

Could your organization benefit from an application performance dashboard?

How effective are your current monitoring tools at tracking all aspects of application transactions and the paths they take (including middleware and cloud-based components)?

How much time do developers spend writing code versus troubleshooting performance bottlenecks?



3Automation Another often overlooked way to improve IT efficiency is through greater use of automation.

One of the biggest indications that

a company could benefit from more

automation is the amount of time

staff members spend on maintenance

and support activities versus the

amount of time they spend on value-

producing activities.

When deploying new cloud-based

applications, inefficient organizations

may take weeks or months to provision

and deploy the environment. Cloud

management tools that provide IT

automation can reduce deployment

and service delivery times to days and

Could IT Automation Improve Your Efficiency? Is IT infrastructure support a core competency or an

ongoing headache?

Are your lines of business moving to a SaaS and/or operational expenditure (opex) model?

Are you concerned about supporting new business initiatives?

Do you need to reduce batch windows?

Are you having difficulty meeting SLAs?

Do you want to optimize resource scheduling?

Are you deploying a hybrid cloud environment?

Are you willing to move applications into the cloud?

Are you rolling out new applications without adding staff?

Do users need to be able to access business applications from mobile devices?

Do you have easy access to templates that speed the deployment of cloud resources?

Do you have a single pane of glass to monitor all your cloud deployments?

How Enfo deploys customer environments 90% faster.

October 2014



hours, thus allowing more scalability.

Companies that arent using automation

effectively may find that they tend to over

provision resources. Without tools to pre-

dict demand spikes and schedule work-

loads, they end up deploying more hard-

ware, which increases costs and places

greater burdens on IT staff.

Like companies with inefficiencies

in operations or APM, companies that

arent using automation effectively often

lack the ability to manage their complex

hybrid cloud infrastructure from a single

solution.

IBM reports that customers that invested

in IT automation tools reduced their client

ticket volumes by 80%, improved their first-

call resolution rate by 25%, and improved

their mean time to resolution by 40%.

They completed cloud deployments in

days instead of weeks, reducing their time

to deploy by 50% or more. Automation

also helped companies reduce outages

related to IT changes by 70%.

In all, automation allowed compa-

nies to lower maintenance-related la-

bor costs by 90%. Organizations using

automation experienced 35% savings

in operation costs and improved staff

productivity. Lastly, they reduced provi-

sioning times by 50-100%, allowing the

business to quickly speed and scale its

IT infrastructure.

4AnalyticsWithout effective IT analytics, organizations have no way to predict IT-related problems. In many cases,

they cant detect problems until users

alert them to issues.

A lack of effective analytics increases

the amount of time staff members spend

dealing with support calls. Resolving

those calls often requires them to sift

through log files manually in order to find

the root cause of problems.

False alarms constantly hamper these

Could Better Analytics Improve Your IT Operations? Are you struggling with issues that take forever to

diagnose and repair? Are you leveraging all available information when

trying to diagnose problems? Are you responding to outages and service

performance issues when they are already in progress?

Are you finding it difficult and expensive to maintain and/or tune your IT management solutions?

Are you inundated with performance warnings that dont correlate with genuine problems?


UBM Tech12 SSS

organizations, distracting staff from real

problems that are much more important. IT

workers also spend a great deal of time main-

taining and tuning IT management solutions,

instead of using those solutions to accom-

plish important tasks.

However, companies that have implement-

ed modern IT analytics say that they are able

to avoid outages, improve their understand-

ing of whats happening in their environ-

ment, and lower their operating expenses.

In fact, in one four-week trial at an Internet

bank, IT was able to detect all the major inci-

dents that occurred, including incidents that

would have been silent without the use of

the analytics solution. They were also able to

eliminate manual thresholds, which the com-

pany believed would translate into annual

savings of $300,000.

Most importantly, the company found that

analytics helped it avoid outages. During the

trial, IT staff were able to predict outages three

to five days before they occurred. Over four

weeks, the system issued 10 major incident

alerts before customers detected a problem.

These capabilities saved the bank an estimated

$600,000.

Begin the ProcessDramatic improvements in IT efficiency gener-

ally dont happen overnight. Its a long-term,

ongoing process that begins with a thorough

analysis of your current IT operations.

By identifying the key areas where processes

and current tools are resulting in needless

waste, companies can begin to take steps to

correct those problems. In many cases, mod-

ern IT service management tools with end-to-

end capabilities can help organizations reduce

the time they spend on IT management activi-

ties and increase the amount of time their staff

can spend innovating in ways that can make

the organization more successful. p


In a four-week trial of an IT analytics solution, IT staff at an Internet bank detected all the major incidents that occurred,

including those that would have been silent without the

analytics solution.

October 2014


Product Spotlight:Tools to Improve Your

IBMs IT Service Management platform is designed to help companies optimize their IT delivery and accelerate their rate of innovation. It includes an array of different

products and services centered on operations, performance management, automation,

and analytics. Some of the key offerings include the following:

Netcool Operations Insight with Network Management. For companies that are looking to improve their operational agility and efficiency while speeding up

their problem identification and resolution, Netcool Operations Insight offers a

host of real-time and historical analytic capabilities. Based on this tools capabilities, Enterprise

Management Associates has named IBM a value leader in advanced performance analytics.

IT Management6


Application Performance Management. Unlike tools that only provide visibility into traditional

or cloud-based infrastructure, IBMs applica-

tion performance management tool gives

organizations the ability to monitor and man-

age traditional, virtualized, cloud, and hybrid

environments from within a single solution. It

allows IT managers to see how the application

is performing from the end users point of view

and track transactions from start to finish, al-

lowing faster problem resolution.

Control Desk. This software unifies service request, IT change and con-

figuration, and IT asset lifecycle man-

agement in a single solution. Its intuitive self-

help portal and service catalogue allows users

to solve many of their own problems, eliminat-

ing a number of the help desk requests that IT

must handle.

Workload Automation. The multi-functional IBM Workload Automa-

tion combines the capabilities of

IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler and IBM

Tivoli Workload Scheduler for Applications,

along with the ability to provision cloud

computing resources. With it, IT can model

workflows in advance to detect any potential

problems before they occur, as well as moni-

toring and managing unattended cloud-

based workflows.

Cloud Orchestration. Based on open standards, IBM Cloud Orches-

trator speeds the configuration and

deployment of a cloud environment, as well

How IBM Cloud Orchestrator automates cloud service delivery.

Product Spotlight: 6 Tools to Improve Your IT Management

UBM Tech15 SSS

as monitoring and managing public,

private, and hybrid clouds. It simplifies

the process of managing complex,

dynamic cloud environments, helping

to reduce costs, accelerate service deliv-

ery, and automate business processes.

Analytics. IBM offers two analytics tools for improving

IT operations and manage-

ment: Log Analysis and Predictive

Insights. Log Analysis tackles the big-

data challenge of integrating data

from logs, events, metrics, support

documents, and trouble tickets, so that

IT can analyze the information to find

and fix ongoing problems as quickly

as possible. Predictive Insights goes

a step further, allowing IT to predict

problems with applications or middle-

ware before any outages occur. p

Additional ResourcesOptimizing IT and Service Management:

A Virtual Conference

About IBMIBM is the worlds largest informa-

tion technology company, with 80

years of leadership in helping clients

innovate. Drawing on a breadth of

capabilities and best practices from

across IBM and our extensive partner

ecosystem, we offer clients within

every industry a wide range of servic-

es, solutions, and technologies that

can help them improve productivity,

respond rapidly to the needs of their

business, and reduce development

and operations costs.

www.ibm.com

Product Spotlight: 6 Tools to Improve Your IT Management

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