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Jan 14 2008   8:42PM GMT

Digging into the DCAB 6’s functional areas: Process Orchestration



Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, HP Software, IBM Tivoli, IT Process Automation, Opalis, Optinuity, RBA, Run Book Automation, Stratavia, BMC, NetIQ, OpTier, Scapa Technologies, LANDesk, Enigmatec, GridApp Systems

Alright, back on track with our review of the 6 functional DCAB areas. We are now onto the hottest, fastest growth areas! First up, Process Orchestration or what Gartner has coined as Run Book Automation?

These products offer the ability to define, build, orchestrate, manage, monitor and report on workflows that automate specific IT intra or inter domain processes (intra = between different products for the Windows Server team or inter = between the application and network team). There are a ton of case studies and examples on most the players websites.

A couple quick examples to get a flavor include:

A monitoring product identifies a specific condition (e.g., an outage), it then checks a configuration auditing product to see if a recent change was performed for that system.

A configuration auditing product monitoring if a device is in or out of compliance notices an situation and then automatically opens a trouble ticket. Later, it notices again the situation has been resolved and it adds the appropriate details to the ticket and automatically closes it out.

Here are the companies I know about (as always, in alphabetical order)

BMC (formerly RealOps)
Enigmatec
GridApp
HP (formerly Opsware, formerly iConclude)
IBM (formerly ThinkDynamics)
LANDesk (Process Manager product)
NetIQ (Aegis product)
OpTier
Opalis
Optinuity
Scapa Technologies
Stratavia
UC4 Software
xTigo

As always, who am I missing. What are the opinions out there from users or evaluators for each platform (please chime in down in the comments section). I have personal product exposure and experience with only BMC, Stratavia. Some of the key features that I learned from those products included the value of having a normalized, common data model and “action” abstraction capabilities so you re-use previous process actions in new workflows.

Here are a couple good reviews and write-ups for further reading if desired.

Data Center Manager Primed for IT Process Automation
IT Process Automaton Overview and review of some players

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Dmcclure  |   Jan 15 2008   9:21PM GMT

Ryan,

I’m not sure what that ThinkDynamics product is, but via the MUSE acquisition, the Netcool/Impact product is heavily used in this area.

Doug


 

Ryan Shopp  |   Jan 15 2008   9:36PM GMT

Doug, just looked at the Impact product and see where it does fit this area. I was looking around and didn’t see any information about a graphical workflow UI to simplify the design around orchestrating processes. Does Impact offer that? I’ve worked with the former ThinkDynamics product previously, which I think is now Tivoli Provisioning Manager and/or Intelligent Orchestrator, and it had this GUI interface to create/orchestrate the steps of the workflow. I think it’s being primarily used/positioned for system/application provisioning. Any further thoughts or clarification you can provide. For example: what would Tivoli position these days against the HP’s Opsware SAS and former iConclude product….I would have guessed prior to your post Tivoli Configuration Manager & Tivoli Provisioning Manager? I’m wide open to correction, please let me know.


 

Dmcclure  |   Jan 16 2008   2:04PM GMT

Ryan,

Netcool/Impact had a simplistic “workflow” GUI in the past but it’s not there anymore. The typical MUSE customer was generally anti-GUI. This is a big gap in the product when positioned against others and is probably one of the big reasons Real Ops was created (Windward CG (where Real Ops was born of) was a big MUSE partner). It can do any/all of those process automation or autonomic things, it just takes a programmer familiar with Impact Policy Language (IPL) to do them. Take a look at the Tivoli OPAL site and some of the Impact contributions there for examples.

My guess is that TCM and TPM are the core products from a provisioning and deployment perspective ala Opsware or Bladelogic. Another product called Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI) may be capable of doing some PA type things as well. It’s very similar to Netcool/Impact in some ways as the “swiss army knife” for integrations.

HTH,

Doug


 

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