My recent article on BSM generated more e-mail than just about any other story this year. What was most interesting were the different (and diametrically opposed) perspectives that I saw.

Many of the highlights in the article resonated with enterprise IT shops that wereno' quite sold on BSM, or had bad experiences implementing parts of the solution. Most felt that the importance of the process and ensuring that a sound architecture is in place were critical before throwing more tools at the problem.

On the other side of the spectrum, the gloomy tone of the article frustrated many software vendors that are investing substantial marketing and sales into promoting BSM solutions. Many still will not recognize the complexity of the problem and feel that their products really do help. While disagreeing with article, hats off to BMC CTO Tom Bishop's blog response posting for kicking off his piece stating "Business Service Management is neither fast or easy."

If more vendors took this pragmatic approach, it would help the industry wrestle with this important problem and actually increase the visibility into critical IT services. Overall, vendors can provide components of the BSM solution and are doing a lot to push the industry forward. As long as expectations are set early on and a plan is in place, BSM can be a win-win.