A Simple Plan
James Governor
06 May 02
The principle underpinning this simplified portfolio is borrowed from IBM's Patterns for eBusiness.1 The Patterns are high-level requirement sets abstracted from best practices established during thousands of IBM Global Services engagements. The theory is that most business systems can be modeled using one of just a few archetypal patterns. Although applications that support different businesses may seem fundamentally different as well, their essential structures are usually very similar. Thus, for example, the design pattern that underpins online buying at one site maps pretty consistently to any consumer e-commerce site. The Patterns follow an 80/20 rule: most IT engagements only require that 20% of the functionality to be customized while 80% is standard.
Tivoli now segments its P&A products not by the target platform it is designed to manage, but by the function of that infrastructure component within an E-Business Pattern. Therefore, the new Tivoli Monitoring for Database is one package designed to support any database, with specific proactive analysis components (PACs) for specific functionality. Six initial patterns are:
- Tivoli Monitoring for Databases (replacing at least five different products for DB2, Oracle, Informix, Sybase, and Microsoft SQL Server)
- Tivoli Monitoring for Applications (packaged apps, particularly SAP R/3, PeopleSoft 8, and Siebel 7)
- Tivoli Monitoring for Messaging and Collaboration (Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange)
- Tivoli Monitoring for Business Integration (MQSeries, MQSeries Integrator)
- Tivoli Monitoring for Web infrastructure (WebSphere Application Server)
- Tivoli Monitoring for Content & Personalization (Websphere Application Server)
- Tivoli Monitoring for Security & Edge Services
There is not in every case a straightforward mapping from old product to new product. The Patterns provide a different kind of segmentation, sometimes using the same infrastructure pieces in different ways. Thus Domino can play a role in Web-site personalization, alongside a WebSphere app server, or the same function might be provided by WebSphere alone. That is the beauty of the Patterns approach—it addresses business problems, as opposed to infrastructure issues.
Going forward, Tivoli is likely to establish specific patterns for vertical industries, such as finance, health, and banking. After all, companies in these industries tend to face similar kinds of management challenges, in the same way that they face similar application development challenges.
1. See Illuminata Research Note, "Blueprints for E-Business Success", (February 2001).
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