IBM
IBM said its new Tivoli Monitoring Engine software makes integrated has unmasked new
management software from its Tivoli
line equipped with new self-managing features to help find and fix bugs
in systems before they become network-wide problems.
Big Blue is holding court about the products in New Orleans this week during the IBM DeveloperWorks Live! 2003 event. With that backdrop, its autonomic computing
initiative is clearly in the spotlight.
environments easier to use, allowing developers and independent systems
vendors to embed autonomic capabilities into their applications. Also, for
those that want to ratchet up their defense against system outages, the new
Tivoli Autonomic Monitoring Engine contains self-healing technology that
allows systems to recover quickly from network issues, detecting resource
outages and potential problems before they impact system performance.
This software engine is another aspect of IBM’s new Autonomic
Computing Blueprint for assisting customers as they begin to build
autonomic computing systems. The template provides an architecture for
helping businesses assemble technologies from disparate suppliers.
How does this work? In a practical use, an ISV might use the Tivoli
Autonomic Monitoring Engine software to craft an application for an online
retailer that automatically divvies up resources based on user priority. In
the case of an outage or glitch, the engine would ensure that priority user
needs would still be met, while holding non-premier users in queue until
system resources are regained.
This helps companies be more proactive in dealing with problems. When the
problem occurs and a system goes down, thousands or millions of dollars of
business may be lost. IBM argues Tivoli Autonomic Monitoring software may
help stave off such problems. IBM’s autonomic software, like its overarching
on-demand computing strategy, is geared to save time and money in a stifled
economic market. Analysts and industry experts have been highly touting this
approach to computing and competitors like Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and
HP, to name a few, are following suit.
To help ISVs benefit from these self-healing features, IBM is also offering
them a software developer kit (SDK) so they can begin using the Tivoli
Autonomic Monitoring Engine to link their products to IBM Tivoli Monitoring
and future autonomic products. Alexander LAN; Emageon; Retek; and TripWire
have already indicated interest in the new software.
IBM also announced more upgrades to its Tivoli line Wednesday:
Package Studio and InstallShield’s AdminStudio to automate software
installation across an enterprise
maintenance upgrades and application monitoring
Also, IBM agree to integrate ATM maker NCR’s APTRA software with IBM Tivoli
Configuration Manager for ATMs to provide remote
software distribution and inventory management
provides remote access anywhere, and requires no
endpoint installation or maintenance.
includes enhanced central logging and full
datastream encryption
Lastly, IBM added new self-managing capabilities for IBM Tivoli Storage Area
Network Manager v1.2, IBM Tivoli Storage Resource Manager v1.2, and IBM
Tivoli Storage Manager 5.2.
