 |
|
European Tivoli appliance managed service |
Pirean (published 16/10/2009) |
| |
Network and Application management service offered for the IBM Tivoli appliance in Europe by Pirean
Pirean, a delivery partner for IT Service and Security management, has became the first IBM Partner to offer managed services using new IBM Tivoli appliances launched on the 15th of October. The Pirean Solution Assured Managed Service provides Pirean clients access to the IBM Tivoli Foundations Application and Service Manager appliances from as little as £1000 per month. Its managed services offering is aimed at organisations of up to 1000 staff, offering a turnkey solution which allows mid-sized businesses to embrace IBM Tivoli Software’s enterprise class IT Service Management platform.
“Tivoli is a highly respected platform that many mid market organisations have often overlooked due to the perceived higher cost of implementation and licensing,” comments Stuart Wilson, MD of Pirean, “IBM’s new appliance model helps us to reduce implementation time in a medium sized Tivoli environment by around a third. This allows us to dedicate more resources to helping the client define and implement better processes and less time on the technical elements.”
IBM Tivoli Foundations Application Manager appliance provides comprehensive monitoring, alerting, and reporting on the performance and availability of server operating systems, databases, and email applications, ensuring manageability of resources and automation to relieve the burden of manually monitoring the IT environment.
IBM Foundations Service Manager appliance enables automated service desk capabilities to identify and respond to performance issues faster and more accurately through IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) aligned service request, incident, and problem management processes. It can also significantly reduce the workload on IT support staff through a self-service and knowledge management portal that helps end-users proactively address their own issues.
Mike Cartwright, CTO for Pirean, who worked closely with IBM on the beta version of the Tivoli Appliances adds, “The appliances are all specified for high availability with full RAID and self healing capability while a number of new modules for network and application discovery have been created especially for the appliance to aid for rapid implementation on ongoing managed services.”
Pirean provides a flexible offering allowing IBM Tivoli appliance clients to either integrate either device into their own service desk or to allow Pirean to run the system on their behalf as a completely managed service. Pirean has completed backend integration with IBM Tivoli appliances into its service support systems and help desk teams to allow seamless 24/7 support.
“By having a standardised hardware build and secure remote access capability, many of the most time consuming elements of a typical managed service have effectively been simplified.” Cartwright adds.
Pirean, a leading IBM Premier partner in Europe and the US, is also testing pre-loaded IBM Tivoli appliances with other applications including its own portfolio for Security Compliance and Access Management. “The network and system management space is pretty crowded but few can fault the features and quality of the Tivoli platform and IBM partner community, these new appliances will bring that expertise to a new market.” Wilson added.
In a recent whitepaper on the appliance market, Jon Collins from Analyst firm Freeform Dynamics stated: An area which is currently seeing a growing amount of interest is around appliances which have system management software pre-installed and (as much as possible) pre-configured. The key advantages of such appliances are centred on “simplicity”. As such tools are delivered as a hardware or software / virtual appliance they are, by their very nature, relatively straightforward to install and make operational. This in turn often supplies additional potential benefits through getting the systems management solution deployed rapidly.
Beyond the speed of implementation, an oft-mentioned advantage involves reducing the overhead associated with updating and maintaining the solution. In addition users need just be trained in the use of a single tool, thereby saving time and training costs. Some appliances do point out that they try to deliver “ease of use” and consistent interfaces to simplify usage.
Pirean will be running a number of workshops across the UK aimed at demonstrating to mid-market organisations the benefit of the new Tivoli Managed service. |
|
|
|
|
|
