Business Service Management (BSM) is a winner all around for IT departments, which can use it to support business objectives, simplify infrastructures, and reduce costs, according to BMC Software Consulting Product Manager Jim Byrd.

During the ebizQ webinar Business Service Management for WebLogic, Tuxedo, J2EE and PeopleSoft Environments, part of the BMC-sponsored series Improving Business Agility Through Business Service Management, Byrd illustrated the point by looking at technical and management challenges to, and solutions provided by, three popular products: PeopleSoft, BEA WebLogic Server, and BEA Tuxedo.

“Ultimately, your success should not be measured on how well you make IT operate and perform, but rather how well IT supports the provision of business services,” he asserted.

The first steps, Byrd said, involve identifying services critical to your business, implementing a strong systems management infrastructure, and defining and detecting changes in dynamic business-IT interactions.

Still, e-business systems running multiple components across a distributed environment offer numerous potential trouble spots, while end-users’ demand for always-on availability creates a shrinking maintenance window. “For many companies, management complexities have increased faster than staff can handle or be trained to handle,” Byrd noted.

But there are solutions at hand.

Automating routine and complex administration tasks and providing administrators with a central view and control over the entire environment helps to quickly detect and correct problems, Byrd said. It also enables IT personnel “to focus on managing the business service landscape -- a much higher-value proposition.”

“No matter how well protected your information system may be, problems will eventually occur,” Byrd observed. “Constantly monitoring the availability of system components and applications can reduce the impact of the outage that is felt by the end-user. Providing proactive alerting as well as fast, automated recovery of system components minimizes unplanned outages. Understanding system resources and components at a highly detailed level simplifies the process of automating complex routines and maintenance tasks, thereby reducing costly planned downtime for the organization.”