There were some funny commercials and some not so funny commercials during the Super Bowl.   The one with Ozzie and Beiber was kind of funny, but I question if the commercial had impact, as in, did it sell something?   If you saw the commercial, which company was the commercial for, what is it that they were selling?

Business Service Management has some of the same challenges.  There are many metrics that IT is watching, but in the end, what is it that they are trying to get out of the metrics, what is it that we are watching in IT?   Does looking at a dashboard with response times mean BSM, does looking at a group of correlated alarms equate to doing BSM, does showing the availability of a database imply BSM… no, but all of it together with even more gets you into the ball park of Business Service Management.

The point is, focusing on the underlying technologies or only specific areas of the enterprise does not allow for IT to have a good understanding of the Services being offered and/or if the Services are up, running and happy.  One of the main objectives of Business Service Management is to have a clear picture of the Services that are being offered to the end customer (internal or external), being able to see the services end to end and understand the overall health and availability.   Don’t allow IT to get distracted by the technology silos, get them focused on the Services being provided to the end users.

Tobin