One breakout session I attended can serve as an illustration. Although IBM experts managed most tracks, a number run by customers, including France Telecom, were very worthwhile. The subject in the France Telecom session focused on why the company adopted IBM's SVC (SAN Volume Controller) for SAN virtualization. Now, any enterprise has to be careful about adopting new software capabilities into its IT operations and obviously telecommunications companies are especially sensitive about this issue as they are especially sensitive about how IT performance, such as availability and responsiveness, affects service delivery.
The company pursued an internal selection process, running two production pilots: one was to test basic functions and features and the second was to test scalability. Both tests went well, with the result that IBM's SVC was selected for production-level qualification testing. Why? Because SVC provided the necessary continuity of service with no performance penalty, along with cost, energy and licensing capabilities, as well as staff productivity improvements.
Note that France Telecom is an EMC shop for block-based storage using NetApp for NAS storage and plans to stay that way. So, the company is using IBM SVC to virtualize a competitor's storage hardware! That required a switch to IBM's replication tools, as SVC could not provide its full functionality and still run with EMC's replication tools, but France Telecom was willing to make that tradeoff. This not only demonstrates that SVC works as promised in heterogeneous (i.e., non-IBM) environments, but also qualifies as proof showing that enterprises continue to buy a mix of heterogeneous products and services that best reflect and fulfill their requirements. Note also that France Telecom needed greater reporting capabilities than those available from IBM. As a result, IBM France developed a new STAR (Storage Tiering Activity Reporter) solution to help France Telecom meet its monitoring requirements. This is another good example of how listening to customers can lead the development of new commercial functionality and opportunity.
My Take
IT conferences like Pulse2010 can help people better understand vendors' big picture strategic visions, but attendees can gain further edification by examining the wares on display and talking with experts in various disciplines. Overall, shows like Pulse2010 are valuable in extending the diffusion and transfer of knowledge. Still, as the world economy slowly struggles to recover, IT innovations will continue to be a strong driver of global economic growth. Large IT vendors help when they can turn their visions into reality by leveraging the capabilities of what their customers can do. On that journey, integrated service management, as defined by IBM at Pulse2010, can play a key role.
Integrated service management can lead to smarter services. That can lead to reduced costs whether that is in energy or related to something specific to an organization, such as reduction in therapy costs for a health care provider. Service-level related activities, such as availability and reliability, can be improved. Moreover, integrated service management may lead to new or expanded products and services that can add value by doing more of what was already being done or enabling something that was previously not able to be done at all or in a cost-feasible way. The combination of better cost management, better service levels, and a better prospect for overall added value is a winning one for integrated service management.
