Gartner

Cool Vendors in IT Operations Process Automation, 2007

Friday, March 9, 2007

Gartner highlights vendors with intriguing technology in the new, emerging IT operations area of IT operations process automation (run book automation). > read more

Hype Cycle for IT Operations Management, 2006

Friday, July 7, 2006

The IT operations market has some mature technology; however, process and technology innovation continues unabated, accompanied by the requisite hype. The IT Operations Hype Cycle will help users understand the visibility and expectations associated with these IT operations processes and technology. > read more

Run Book Automation: The Drivers and Inhibitors

Wednesday, July 5, 2006

IT management process automation remains a future objective for many enterprises because of cost, effort and risk. However, the growing challenges for IT management call for more rigorous and sophisticated approaches, leading to a growing number of early adopters looking to run book automation. > read more

IT Operations Run Book Automation: Automated Operations Revisited

Friday, June 2, 2006

IT operations run book automation products are emerging as a way to automate, through workflows, IT operational tasks across different IT management disciplines in support of the IT management process. RBA products can differ significantly, so one size will not fit all. > read more

Forrester

Tech Horizons: Sizing The Emerging Market For IT Process Automation Software

Monday, November 19, 2007

Innovation has become both more accessible and more global. Acquisitions, especially in software and IT technology, are fast becoming the preferred exit strategy of many innovators - as we can see from the speed with which large software vendors are gobbling up small ones. In this context, Forrester believes that we should evaluate emerging technologies through a rational and methodical approach that considers the technical and economic factors that a new solution will improve when it comes to market. > read more

The IT Management Software Market

Friday, March 9, 2007

IT is now a fundamental support of business activities - which means the greatest IT operations sins are an unpredictable user experience and a failure to reduce overall service delivery costs. The resulting quest to improve productivity and the predictability of IT results has led to the creation of business service management and the configuration management database (CMDB) as the two central pillars of the new wave of IT management software tools. ITIL, seen by many organizations as a complement to these technologies, is playing an ever-increasing role in their adoption. As IT finally enters the industrialized era, Forrester sees a new way of managing IT emerge, creating a renewed interest in refining existing implementations and creating a new wave of solutions. Consequently, IT management software will be a high-growth market over the next few years. >read more

Champagne Monitoring On A Beer Budget: Can We Manage an Infrastructure Using Cheap and Efficient Products?

Monday, Dec 11, 2006

At some point in time in the life of a growing IT organization, the question of monitoring the distributed infrastructure is bound to arise. Whether it's a shift from a mainframe-centric infrastructure or the result of a growing business, there is a critical point at which staff skills alone are no longer enough to manage incidents and problems. At that stage, the choice is to either go with one of the four major vendors, guaranteeing that all the future management needs will be covered, or to use a best-of-breed solution for the problem at hand, which leaves the future questions open. Usually, best-of-breed solutions, while limited in scope, cost less in terms of license and installation (the beer part), but they don't "integrate" easily with other complementary solutions to provide an overall effective IT management scheme (the champagne part). In reality, a combination of process and technology may help overcome this integration hurdle and provide cheap, but excellent, champagne. > read more

IT Operations And Systems Management: The Next Five Years

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

The IT operations role has moved from backstage to center stage in many enterprises. A major reason for this is the importance of IT service delivery in a business world that is now entirely dependent on all facets of technology. Another reason is the realization that IT operation costs are growing in sync with technology implementation. Years of improvement in application development and infrastructure technologies have created a steady flow of business applications. This has created a major delivery bottleneck, because the operability and manageability of infrastructure components has not made any significant progress for the past 15 years. Because of the attention it receives, we now see IT operations moving fast in the direction of improved management processes with ITIL and advanced management technologies with BSM and the CMDB. The first step in the evolution has been to move from a technology orientation to a service orientation in IT operations. The next step is to introduce more automation and reach a point where IT operation management processes drive management solutions that function as support for processes, not technologies. > read more

The Future Of Data Center Automation How Automation Tools Will Mature And Consolidate Through 2007

Friday, Feb 3, 2006

Data center automation (DCA) products have evolved from basic provisioning and software distribution tools into powerful platforms that govern many aspects of data center operations. While many products share a common foundation in configuration management, DCA products have broadened their reach into asset management, compliance auditing, and policy-based automation. As a result, firms are confronted with a wide array of DCA products with overlapping capabilities - particularly in configuration management. Forrester expects that vendors of large system management suites will integrate the whole range of DCA capabilities over the next two years - but at the cost of proprietary integration and point-product vendors that must compete with these large DCA suites. > read more

Enterprise Management Associates

The EMA All-Stars in Enterprise Systems Management for 2008

January 2008

In this EMA Research Report, EMA highlights what it considers to be the best available software solutions in a number of specific disciplines, in order to form a 'Systems Management All-Star' team, and further highlights the 'best of the best' with selection to the All-Star First Team. Opalis takes a starting spot on the IT Process Automation (ITPA) All-Star First Team with a mature and detailed product, a strong pattern of development and innovation, and an extremely usable and functional package approach to ITPA. > read more

EMA Advisory Note: Highlighting Real-World Experiences of Data Center Automation - An EMA Research Summary

November 2007

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) conducted extensive research into the world of Data Center Automation (DCA). The research results were published in October 2007 as an EMA Research Report titled Data Center Automation: Delivering Fast, Efficient, and Reliable IT Services. This EMA Advisory Note provides a brief summary of the research including an educated definition of today's Data Center, a relevant definition of Data Center Automation and its disciplines, and key findings like the benefits and barriers to adopting Data Center Automation. > read more

EMA Advisory Note: Highlighting Real-World Experiences of Data Center Automation - An EMA Research Summary for Opalis

November 2007

The ability to automate and integrate the workflow of complex multi-discipline IT management processes is the glue that binds the entire DCA stack. Data center operations are full of complex multi-disciplinary workflows such as business requests for new systems, processes for approving and managing security changes, or application data extract/transform/load operations. Without IT Process Automation (ITPA), every task in these process stands alone, and the problems of manual processing creep back into the Data Center.> read more

Opalis Software Releases OIS 5.3

December 2006

Opalis, provider of a suite of IT Process Automation software, has recently announced the release of version 5.3 of its Opalis Integration Server. New enhancements to the product include solutions-based policies, integration packs and dashboard views, which provide a more robust and simplified automation environment. Compliance with ITIL based industry best practices coupled with a broad range of integration and "out-of-the-box" automation policies provide a positive enhancement to any enterprise support environment. Enterprise Management Associates provides an analysis of the new features, how it impacts the IT support operations industry, and guidance for end users seeking support performance improvements. > read more

Resolving Critical Problem Areas in Data Center Operations

May 2006

This EMA White Paper explains how IT Operations and Business executives face many challenges keeping labor costs down, providing adequate service levels, and driving operational efficiency, especially in critical data center operations such as Service Level Monitoring, Event Lifecycle Management, and End-User Service. It explains how EMA's research shows that complexity, manual management, and non-integrated operational tools cause significant problems to enterprises. It outlines how Data Center Automation and Integration can substantially address these issues and help IT organizations to reduce labor costs, improve service levels, and ensure more efficient resource utilization in critical areas of data center operations. Finally, it reviews how the Opalis Integration Server provides a solution for Data Center Automation and Integration that is likely to deliver significant benefits to IT and to the business. > read more

Ptak, Noel & Associates

Opalis Integration Server 5.3: Extending the Reach of Run Book Automation

December 2006

Opalis Software announced its latest release, Opalis Integration Server 5.3 to extend its solution to deliver more out-of-the-box IT operations process templates, additional integration packs, and a new dashboard. Opalis' Runbook Automation software assists IT administrators and operators in automating manual, repetitive operational tasks; the result frees skilled operators to tend to activities that require direct human intervention and more sophisticated judgment. Scheduled to ship in late December, Opalis' latest release continues to broaden its applicability for data center operations automation. We'll see what the fuss is all about but let's first make clear an important distinction. > read more

The 451 Group

Opalis Touts Focus on ITIL Processes in its Flavor of Run-book Automation

March 20, 2007

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Server Virtualization is Transforming Datacenter Management, Creating a Key New Enterprise IT Battleground

December 14, 2006

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Bloor Research

How CIOs Can Win Back the Hearts and Minds of Users

Friday, March 2, 2007

Run Book is what IT data centre managers understand as the Application Run Book. This is the IT Department "to do" list of problems to fix and the projects to deliver. This is a long and complex list, and keeping everything in sync, well co-ordinated, and efficiently using IT resources is a nightmare. Over 80% of IT-related problems are attributed to changes made to the IT environment. In addition, many IT department operations such as IT Support Helpdesks and Competence Centres are often activity silos, and true IT Department-wide business processes are few. > read more

IDC

Users Identify Benefits Utilizing Run Book Automation

February 2007

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