The pinnacle of integrated, service-oriented management strategies is embodied by Business Service Management (BSM) solutions. Such products are intended to bring together a holistic/systemic view of IT infrastructure and services, recognize relationships between collections of elements, and put them into context regarding how they support business activities and processes. Large enterprise organizations have been the sweet spot for traditional BSM framework solutions, but product complexity, integration costs, and services needed for deployment and maintenance have made them impractical for the broader IT community. A new breed of next-generation BSM offerings is arising to provide more cost-effective answers that intrinsically unify data across IT technology domains, lowering both acquisition and deployment costs. This paper discusses the essential requirements for successful BSM deployments, examines how Next-Gen BSM solutions differ from traditional alternatives, and reviews a Next-Gen BSM solution offered by Centerity in light of those requirements. By Enterprise Management Associates.
