Infrastructures change, so automate the process

This has now become a sector of IT management where the application of automation is urgently required, for it is fast becoming too complex to manage in any other way. HP is keen to build a differentiated automation solution to this and its point of differentiation has, in fact, little specific to do with technology. Instead it is the ability for customers to select the modules from its Business Service Automation suite that then provide end-to-end business service management of the infrastructure. At one extreme, therefore, an enterprise can contract with HP to provide the entire management suite. In practice, however, this is likely to be a rare occurrence. Users are most likely to have point solution elements of the service management environment already in place.

What is now needed is where HP is targeting itself - providing an infrastructure management analogy for Microsoft's Office. The need is now to provide a way of integrating the management of change in complex systems, particularly where those systems now include a growing variety of personal and desktop thick and thin clients, servers, storage systems and the physical implementation of the network and infrastructure fabric. In addition, `complex systems' now also encompasses the services being provided to the end users, together with the means of their delivery.

While there are some who would certainly view Office as a curse upon the earth, its one significant advantage is that, for the vast majority of users, it contains all the functionality they need for general office productivity tasks. And by and large the components work well and have a high level of functional richness. This is, at least to some degree, the model HP is pitching at with BTO in the world of end-to-end infrastructure management systems.

It does have one major difference from that basic model, however, in that it is fully modular. While Office users get soup-to-nuts as a package, regardless of wanting only the Quail's Eggs, HP is acknowledging that infrastructure management is already heavily populated with a wide range of point solution tools, and that many potential customers will not want to change from those tools for many different reasons - ranging from incomplete ROI and amortisation issues through to staff training and experience and on to the fitness of a particular tool for a specific management purpose.

So HP's position is now to provide an open, modular suite of tools that can be used to complement existing infrastructure systems and fill them out into an end-to-end management environment.

The company is aiming BTO at what it describes as the `Fortune 2000 companies' market, with financial services and telecommunications companies amongst its early adopters. It does not see itself driving down to the SMB market for some time yet, certainly with direct licence-based contracts. The tools do, however, map well onto the company's existing Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model for infrastructure management services. The SaaS division of HP has been pitching a service delivery approach to infrastructure management for several years and the BTO suite is already being seen as an important addition to its existing offerings.

This option could also make it available to the SMB marketplace, where its modularisation and ability to integrate with many existing tools could prove a useful route towards installing higher levels of automation into SMB infrastructure management.

Email to a friend

Print this page