Concord Communications, Inc, an industry leader in optimising IT services to drive business success, today unveiled its new Business Service Console - a milestone product in its strategy to deliver an integrated, end-to-end business service management (BSM) solution.
During the past year, Concord has executed on a series of strategic initiatives designed to enable customers to better leverage its eHealth Suite at all levels of the enterprise. Combined, the moves allow Concord to deliver an integrated solution that maps IT services to business needs, measures the actual end-user experience, and manages applications, systems and networks.
Concord`s BSM framework enables organisations to understand and improve the quality of the key business services that organisations rely on to generate profitable revenue. The solution manages the availability and performance of the entire business service, from the applications, to the systems, to the network. Without this complete view, organisations are only managing devices, and are unable to view and manage the complete business service.
For example, infrastructure upgrades or issues need to be prioritised based on the impact they have on the business service`s availability and performance to the end-user. This is why measuring the end-user experience as part of a complete service view is critical. The end-user is where IT and the business intersect - the link between IT services and the business.
"For today`s global enterprises and managed service providers, managing the IT infrastructure isn`t just about managing devices anymore," said Jack Blaeser, Concord Communications` president and CEO. "Rather, the relevancy of the modern enterprise is measured by the services it delivers - how much value they provide, how timely they are delivered, and how reliable they are to the end-users. The way we see it, the business is the service, and the service is the IT infrastructure. Ensuring high availability and responsiveness of the entire IT infrastructure, therefore, drives high value for the entire business."
Integrated end-to-end management increases uptime
In the modern enterprise, availability and performance of the IT infrastructure is as critical to business success as the reliability of electricity or the phone service. However, mission-critical applications, the systems on which they run, and the networks that tie it all together, are not nearly as stable as these utilities. In fact, according to a recent study by Infonetics Research, large US companies lose an average of $41 million each year in revenue and lost productivity due to IT downtime. Of that number, $14.5 million is attributed to software, while $8.7 million is attributed to hardware issues. (1)
"Technology has clearly been a driving force in improving productivity in the American workforce," stated Jeff Wilson, Principal Analyst at Infonetics Research. "However, we are now so dependent on our IT infrastructure, that when it goes down, or slows down, it can be paralysing. To effectively address this problem, companies need an integrated, end-to-end business service management solution - one that manages the applications, systems and networks."
Map, measure, manage
As a result, Concord`s integrated, end-to-end BSM solution starts at the top of the organisation with the business service, such as cash management, order entry, or contact centre. With its eHealth Suite, Concord models the business service to understand the key performance indicators, mapping the IT services to the business service and visualising the results through Concord`s Business Service Console. The Business Service Console delivers a view into the status of the key business services, and a snapshot into the availability and performance of the underlying IT services on which they depend.
In addition, Concord`s Business Service Console provides a snapshot view into the status of selected business services through an industry-first Web-based "ticker" that scrolls across an executive`s desktop. The ticker gives users an intuitive, real-time view into the availability and responsiveness of the IT services on which their business depends. Using simple red, yellow, or green status light icons, Concord`s Business Service Console accelerates problem identification and resolution, leading to increased uptime for applications, systems and networks.
The service`s status is determined by measuring the actual end-user experience. Synthetic testing can simulate and test the user experience, while observational testing is a direct measurement of actual user experience. Combined, they provide a powerful tool to determine the quality of the service the user is receiving. Concord`s Application Performance Management (APM) solution delivers both of these measurement capabilities, allowing organisations to see the impact of IT services to the business.
Lastly, Concord`s eHealth Suite delivers an integrated, end-to-end management solution that enable organisations to move away from the "stove-pipe" management frameworks of the past. These loosely coupled tools often make it difficult to pinpoint the cause of problems. By combining historical information for capacity planning with real-time information for fault identification and resolution, Concord`s integrated management solution enables IT organisations to improve mean-time-to-repair and increase IT service uptime through easy drilldowns from alarms to the information required to resolve the problem quicker and more easily.
By addressing applications, systems, and networks with an integrated, end-to-end business service management solution, Concord has distinguished itself from competing solutions that provide value in a single area. In addition, the simple and intuitive user interface of its new Business Service Console demonstrates Concord`s continuing progress in taking the complexity out of IT infrastructure management and the risk out of business service management. The company will continue to deliver on this strategy over the course of 2004.
According to Gartner: "IS organisations are increasingly being pressured by business units to support end-to-end service-level agreements and provide a business-oriented display of how well IT services are performing in support of critical business processes. To accomplish this, you need tools that document and correlate IT components to business services, thus enabling more-productive communication between the IS organisation that delivers the services and the business users who consume them. The generic industry term for tools offering this functionality is business service management." (2)
(1) The Costs of Enterprise Downtime, North America 2004, Infonetics Research, February 2004
(2) Business Service Management - Lessons Learned, by D Curtis and D Scott, July 2003, #DF-20-1457
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Concord Communications, Inc (Nasdaq: CCRD) provides an integrated solution that enables companies to map their IT services to business needs, measure their actual end-user experience, and manage their applications, systems, and networks. More than 3000 companies worldwide rely on Concord`s eHealth Suite, and its components, to optimise IT services to drive business success. Based in Marlboro, Massachusetts, Concord maintains offices around the globe, and can be found on the Web at www.concord.com.
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