BSM at 40 000 feet

It is currently minus 38 degrees Celsius outside and I am hurtling towards Europe at a rate of knots. Sitting up front of this metal beast are two very qualified "operators" scanning the numerous dashboards, which tell them that the passengers can continue to sleep peacefully, or prompt them at the appropriate time to start screaming. The pilots could be considered super-sharp business service management (BSM) operators.

How in heaven`s name did I come to the comparison of a BSM operator and a skilled aviator? Let me try to explain...

When visiting my parents on Sunday for a nice cup of tea (and cake of course), I mentioned to them that I was travelling to Europe to attend a BSM customer event. All I got from my father was: "You IT guys really have a lekker life - flying around the world, talking about things only a few understand. BSM, whatever..."

This was a challenge I, of course, could not resist and sat quietly for a few moments thinking of an adequate rebuttal. Then it dawned on me: how do I describe business service management to someone who does not understand IT? As my father is an armchair pilot and aviation enthusiast extraordinaire, I thought I`d try and relate BSM to his first love.

In simple terms, BSM is all about managing IT and its related performance in the context of what matters - business services. BSM`s key focus is on measuring the performance of IT as it pertains to business services.

What is needed is a view of how the real service is performing - can users log in, are transactions flowing, what is the average transaction time and is the business service online?

Now, if these types of questions can be answered, business service managers can start having a better conversation with the business owners. This is the kind of information they are interested in. Think of this as top-down BSM. Bottom-up BSM would be understanding how all the IT magic/servers/networks, etc, are performing. Excellence is still needed in each IT domain, as any potential faults/issues in this space could impact the customer service portal.

Of course, a common definition of this business service is needed to be stored and consumed by the relevant service management processes. Thus, the service model of `customer service portal` is defined within the configuration management system (CMS) and then used by the relevant processes, for example, change management for impact analysis. I`ll elaborate on this in a later Industry Insight perhaps.

BSM's key focus is on measuring the performance of IT as it pertains to business services.

Clive Brindley is solutions architect at HP Software, SA.

Imagine an SME has subscribed to cloud services hosted by a trusted service provider. The cloud services are in the form of platform as a service (PaaS). The SME has developed a customer order portal with the cloud infrastructure provided by the cloud provider. Now think of how the SME would want to validate the performance of this critical revenue-generating service. Would it want its cloud provider to send it a daily report on how the clustered Linux farm is performing, that the storage area network had a few performance issues that automatically initiated a failover, or that a minor power outage initiated an automatic uninterruptible power supply kick-in? Was the SME`s portal affected? Could customers still log in and order goods? Not sure? Exactly! The SME will never know. What it needs is an online portal that shows the key transactions, overall site activity, transaction times, transaction numbers and the like. Information that tells the business that things are working and the service is operational.

Now, the service provider will certainly need to know that everything previously mentioned is related to the service. Linux cluster configuration might not be important to the customer, but if a cluster node fails, would it not be proactive to notify the customer, tell them all is okay and that the company is working on getting the failed node back online? The service is, however, not impacted. See how it all comes together? Top down, bottom up!

Now, back to my father. "Dad, it is like this. Would you agree that there are a lot of complex mechanisms that make a plane fly? Today`s pilots have so much information they need to assimilate on a routine flight, that it could become overwhelming without automation and appropriate management information. The Electronic Flight Information System (EFIS) allows the pilot to have the salient, real-time and safety-critical information displayed by flicking a switch.

"Well, that`s just like BSM. It`s about having the right information, for the right person, at the right time. A flashing hydraulic line failure tells the pilot to expedite his/her descent to terra firma and get the problem resolved. The pilot does not know how to fix the fault (only the trained engineer does) but knows enough that it is a safety-critical issue and that emergency procedures must be immediately followed. The EFIS or BSM console might even offer some ideas on how to resolve the issue until an engineer can have a proper look at the fault. It`s exactly the same in business, Dad. We are building EFIS consoles for the pilot of any business - the CEO/CIO. They need the right information to make a call if the business services are healthy, and if not, how to remediate the situation."

I got this reply... "Nice one son; sounds riveting. Can I eat my cake now?" Love you Dad.