Customer Profiles
IBM's Entuity cornerstone solution manages risk and improves quality of service

IBM Global Services is the world's largest information technology services provider, with nearly 150,000 professionals serving customers in 160 countries and annual revenue of more than $33 billion (2000). It mission is to integrate IBM's broad range of capabilities, services, hardware, software and research - as well as products and solutions from other vendors - to help companies of all sizes realize the full value of IT.

Meeting and beating SLAs
The key to any successful relationship between a service provider like IBM and its customer is to match or exceed mutually agreed service level agreements (SLAs). While this is relatively easy as far as applications and servers are concerned, it is much more difficult to guarantee network SLAs.

The changing nature of network technology, combined with the limitations of traditional network management solutions mean that a highly accurate assessment of the nature and state of a customer's network is required before even bidding for business. As the volume of IP traffic expands, driven by massive email and web use, and the rapid deployment of Intranet and e-business applications are put at the very core of customers' business plans, it is essential that a true picture of any network can be drawn.

IBM outlined three critical requirements expected from a 'next-generation' network management solution.

Fast network discovery
The first was understanding of the exact nature of the network. This meant discovering the maximum possible about every asset as quickly as possible, as well as the relationship between them. Gaining a quick, accurate picture of the network as it is allows the service provider to set service levels and expectations realistically. This would position IBM ahead of its competition, providing the best service at the best price.

Fault anticipation
The second requirement was the need to pro-actively manage network performance - and to distinguish between network, server and application problems - by identifying faults and degradation and understand their business impact before any problems emerge.

Fast installation and implementation
IBM's third condition was a fast track, out-of-the-box installation capability. IBM wanted as much of the work to be done during the due diligence phase, a critical phase of any client relationship.

Bernie Newnham, IBM's LAN Management Architect for Northern Europe evaluated a number of network management solutions. He chose Entuity based on the criteria above.

Risk management out-of-the-box
"Eye of the Storm requires little configuration or maintenance. It is hugely proactive -- it just goes and gets the information, down to the port level. We use it to manage our risk with customers. Getting information wrong in the due diligence phase potentially has a huge impact on the profitability of the contract. Entuity provides an accurate asset inventory of hardware, bandwidth and people requirements."

The product integrates fault management, performance management and inventory management in one solution that stands alone or works with a customer's chosen platform and favourite tools. In the UK, IBM Global Services has also deployed Eye of the Storm to manage its own e-SNI network, which underpins IBM's remote managed services offering. Within 30 minutes of installation, Eye of the Storm was able to identify a power supply module fault on a Cisco switch device that was to be commissioned in two weeks.

By integrating Entuity into its network operator's toolkit in the UK, IBM's aim is to reduce the level of expertise required to manage the network, freeing up senior resources to concentrate elsewhere. The product has no deployment or integration costs and there is no need for thousands of man-hours to add new services and functions.

Newnham describes Entuity as a "perfect world" solution. Once the problem has been identified, IBM can instantly identify which user is being affected and what the time to problem resolution is. This is extremely important when the customer's application is dependent on a complex transaction supply chain. IBM can determine where in the supply chain the problem is occurring and establish who is responsible for the service degradation and who will fix it. Being able to proactively monitor the service provided with a full end to end view is key when you are managing multiple services and service providers.

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