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about IBMveryard projects > companies > IBM |
| commentary | products tracked | links to IBM |
IBM's vision of On-Demand Computingbrings
together a number of interesting areas of innovation.
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Rational
Tivoli WebSphere Business Modeller |
Developer Works |
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Project Catalystveryard projects > companies > IBM > project catalyst |
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Provides a method for identifying the key components of a business. |
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Provides a three-dimensional view - strategic, financial, transformational. |
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Provides a way to highlight those areas of the business that are differentiating. |
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Other components that are not differentiating can be evaluated on a cost basis. |
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The point of the exercise is to show where to start an on-demand transformation. |
At Veryard Projects, in collaboration
with the CBDi Forum and others,
we have been championing the component-based
business for many years. We naturally welcome the high profile that
IBM is now giving this important topic.
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Component-Based Business
Management Briefing and Workshops |
| book | Component-Based Business - Plug and Play (Springer, 2001) |
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on Demandveryard projects > companies > IBM > on Demand |
| Responsive | Central to the notion of the on-demand business is the need for responsiveness
to
the demand – satisfying the demand within an appropriate timescale. If
the business or market operates on a quarterly cycle, then we want something
better than an IT response that takes 18 months – and that only after we’ve
undergone a new budgetary cycle. While real-time responsiveness may be
an attractive long-term vision, the current focus of on-demand computing
is going to include prompt response rather than dynamic response.
Responsiveness entails a process for responding promptly to the demand and to changes in demand. Ideally, this process may include anticipating and recognizing demand, as well as reacting to it. |
| Variable | Where it is possible to recognize variety in the demand – and it usually is – this calls for an equal variety in the response, sometime known as requisite variety. We have used the term differentiated service to refer to services that vary with circumstances. Requisite variety may be linked to responsiveness – since if the business supports more variety, it may be more likely that it has an offering that is already close to what you need. |
| Focused | It is unreasonable to expect any organization to maintain high levels of responsiveness and variety across a wide scope, so it is likely that the on-demand business will be highly focused. Differentiated service then links to the strategic differentiation of the on-demand business itself – whose core competences are used to target responsiveness and variety on areas of greatest value to the company and its customers. |
| Resilient | The on-demand business must also be reliable – offering high quality of service at low risk. In order to combine high levels of availability and security with high levels of flexibility, the on-demand business will need to be resilient. |
The goals of responsiveness and resilience are both addressed by the
idea of autonomic computing – which means self-managed
systems.
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Services on Demand (CBDi Journal, December 2002) |
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IBM implementing Model-Based Managementveryard projects > companies > IBM > MBM |
| Business Process Management Loop | Software Development Loop | Security Requirements Loop |
| The WebSphere Business Integration (WBI) toolset
offers a loop for business process management:
WBI Modeler supports the design and simulation of a business process, including workflow design. WBI Application Server connects and integrates an application from a defined set of web services, and executes the workflow. WBI Monitor tracks the activities and events within the business process, and checks on key performance indicators. WBI Monitor feeds live metrics back into the WBI Modeler, with the possibility of dynamic reconfiguration. |
WBI Modeler supports the design and simulation
of a business process, including workflow design. Among other things, this
creates UML models, which can be exported to Rose or any other UML tool.
Rational Rose supports the design of a software application from individual components and (web) services. Rose supports a wide range of web service development environments, including IBM’s own WebSphere Studio. WebSphere Studio is the development environment for web services. WBI Application Server executes the application web services. |
WBI Modeler supports the formulation of policies,
including security policies, and positioning these within the business
process.
Tivoli for Business Integration executes security policies. Both Tivoli Server and WebSphere Business Integration Server contain workflow engines, either of which can be used to execute the security workflow. Security and risk events are recorded in a data store (the Tivoli Data Warehouse), which can be interrogated by third party business intelligence tools. Feedback – both direct from Tivoli and indirect from business intelligence – is available to WBI Modeler to refine the business integration model and associated policies. |
| vendor
material |
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| analytic
material |
CBDi
Journal, July 2003
Veryard Projects webpages Model-based Management, Web Services for Business Intelligence |
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Autonomic Computingveryard projects > companies > IBM > autonomic computing |
IBM’s work on autonomic computing has come out of the eLiza research project, and is starting to be trickled into the IBM product range via Tivoli.
Autonomic computing involves making the individual components and services more manageable – which has implications for their design and implementation – as well as providing a separate management layer. For example, IBM envisages a self-managing wrapper around each component – and these wrappers may communicate peer-to-peer, as well as with a central or decentralized management function. The manageability interfaces will (of course) be rendered as web services.
In some complex areas, machines are already better at configuration than humans. One example of this is in large databases – and IBM has already built self-configuration into DB2 (version 8.1 onwards), its flagship database product. This is presented in the form of a wizard, which asks seven key questions and uses expert heuristics to generate a configuration. Data storage hardware has also been taking on a lot of self-management functions, as this is an area where the ratio of labour costs to hardware costs has been shifting most dramatically.
Other IBM products have self-optimization and self-healing functionality.
For example, Websphere now includes distributed workload, with failover
and hot deployment.
| vendor
material |
IBM webpage on autonomic computing |
| analytic
material |
CBDi
Journal, January 2003
Veryard Projects webpages Autonomic Computing, Model-based Management |
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Articles published by CBDi Forumveryard projects > companies > IBM > CBDi Forum |
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The CBDi Forum is the leading independent source on components and web services. | The CBDI Journal is available free to Silver/Gold members of the Forum. Individual copies can be purchased separately. | Visit the CBDI Forum website for free access to news, commentary and product reviews. Register for free Bronze membership. |
| Title | Abstract | Date |
| Managing
Services -
the IBM Story continues |
A look at the contribution of WebSphere and Tivoli to the management of complex networks of services. | July
2003 |
| Modelling
for SOA
The IBM Story |
With the recent acquisitions of Holosofx and Rational, IBM is now able to present a broad set of modeling tools for SOA. In this review, we explore IBM’s coverage in detail. | May
2003 |
| Autonomic Computing | Discusses various approaches to the management of complexity in Service Oriented Architectures - including HP's OpenView product, IBM's autonomic computing, and Sun's virtualization approach. | Jan
2003 |
| Services on Demand | The next phase of computing - as seen by IBM and other vendors. | Dec
2002 |
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More material on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) |
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veryard projects > companies > ibm |
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