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Network Management and Administration 3-183

ucts provide ITIL-compatible service management functions; in particular, Asset Center offers incident
and task management for smaller telecom operations.
In 2007, HP acquired another company, Opsware, and its product offering, a leading configuration
and provisioning management solution for network devices and server-based software.
HP OpenView Internet Usage Manager (IUM) is a type of mediation software used to process call
and event records for voice and data services. This consolidated data can be used for billing, customer
behavior analysis, or reporting from various other perspectives.
The acquisition of Mercury Interactive in 2006 marks HP’s commitment to management software.
This acquisition enhances the HP portfolio with a comprehensive monitoring, diagnostic, and diag-
nostic framework. Again, obviously, the framework needs to be integrated with the remainder of the
company’s portfolio, and this work is currently well in progress.
OpenView Performance Manager is a partially agent-based software solution used to ensure con-
tinuous availability and performance monitoring of services and networks and to provide historical,
troubleshooting, or trend analyses based on this data. Performance Manger includes an intuitive GUI
that displays comprehensible overviews and aggregates but also allows drilling down to individual data
samples for an accurate inspection of service history.
3.7.4.4 IBM
IBM initially entered the computer business in the 1950s, as the chief contractor developing computers for
the U.S. Air Force’s automated defense systems. By the 1960s, its mainframe computer systems had become
well known and widely used, and by the 1980s the company had established itself as one of the main players
in the information revolution through the introduction of its PC/AT and PC/XT personal computers.
In the mid-1990s, IBM almost went out of business. This near disaster forced the company to change
its focus: The decision was to shift away from components and hardware and toward software and ser-
vices. In 2002, IBM strengthened its business advisory capabilities by acquiring the consulting arm
of professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. The company has increasingly focused on solu-
tion-driven consulting, services, and software, with an emphasis as well on high-value chips and hard-
ware technologies. The new IBM has enhanced global delivery capabilities in consulting, software, and
technology-based process services.
The basis for IBM IT services is the Tivoli Management Platform (a product of the former Tivoli
Systems Inc., which was acquired by IBM in 1996 and assigned to the company’s Software Group divi-
sion). The platform’s framework, a Corba-based architecture that allows the platform to manage large
numbers of remote locations or devices, will be replaced by SOA techniques over time.
With the advent of convergent telecommunications services (and the new challenges posed by ICT
and Next-Generation Networks), IBM entered this market by providing advanced support systems and
services for service providers. Figure 3.7.4 shows the IBM service management architecture.
Telecommunications service providers have begun to implement next-generation operational support
system solutions (NGOSSs) to enable the efficient provisioning, deployment, and implementation of new
types of multimedia services. There will be an increasing demand for products and solutions support-
ing these NGOSS requirements. IBM offers communications service providers a broad range of hard-
ware, software, applications, and services solutions through its Tivoli, WebSphere, and Global Services
organizations. In addition, IBM has further expanded its OSS/BSS solution capabilities through the
acquisition of Micromuse and Vallent. These acquisitions, when combined with IBM’s service-oriented
architecture (SOA) leadership and broad partnership and alliance network, position the company for
a strong presence in the NGOSS arena. However, IBM’s key challenge is addressing competition from
end-to-end solution providers as well as vendors with lower-cost solutions.
Micromuse was a leading provider of network management software used by banks, telecommunica-
tions carriers, governments, retailers, and other organizations to monitor and manage their sophisti-
cated technology infrastructures. The software helps customers manage increasingly complex IT systems
that support the proliferation of voice and video traffic, in addition to data, as a result of the growing