www.novell.com White Paper

A Technical Overview of Novell® Business Service Management Solutions March 2009

p. 2

I N T R O D U C T I O N ................................................................................................................................... 4 

Business Service Management Defined ......................................................................................................... 4 

Novell Business Service Management Solution Summary.............................................................................. 5 

N O V E L L K E Y D I F F E R E N T I A T O R S ........................................................................................... 7 

Automated State-Driven Service Model .......................................................................................................... 7 

The Novell BSM Fabric—An Open and Extensible Platform ........................................................................... 8 

Web 2.0-based Dashboard Interface .............................................................................................................. 8 

Universal Integration ....................................................................................................................................... 9 

Accurate Configuration Modeling .................................................................................................................... 9 

Federated Configuration Management Database ......................................................................................... 11 

A D E T A I L E D L O O K A T N O V E L L B S M S O L U T I O N S .................................................... 12 

Novell Architecture ........................................................................................................................................ 12 

Multi-Vendor Data Integration ....................................................................................................................... 13 

Bringing in Management Data ....................................................................................................................... 13 

Novell BSM Adapters .................................................................................................................................... 13 

Novell Business Data Integrator .................................................................................................................... 16 

Novell Event Integrator ................................................................................................................................. 17 

Novell Universal Adapter .............................................................................................................................. 17 

Proxy Integration ........................................................................................................................................... 18 

Data Normalization ....................................................................................................................................... 18 

Understanding NDL ...................................................................................................................................... 18 

How Alarms Are Propagated ......................................................................................................................... 18 

Object Correlation ......................................................................................................................................... 19 

Visualization .................................................................................................................................................. 21 

The Value in BSM Visualization .................................................................................................................... 21 

Building Consoles and Dashboards .............................................................................................................. 22 

Configuring and Deploying Novell BSM Visualization ................................................................................... 22 

Security ......................................................................................................................................................... 23 

A M O D U L A R A P P R O A C H T O B S M ......................................................................................... 23 

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Automation .................................................................................................................................................... 23 

Reporting ...................................................................................................................................................... 24 

S U M M A R Y O F N O V E L L B S M K E Y B E N E F I T S ................................................................ 25 

S Y S T E M R E Q U I R E M E N T S .......................................................................................................... 26 

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Figure 1: Today’s IT Priorities

I N T R O D U C T I O N Business service management (BSM) is a reality that’s working. Many companies around the world have

made Novell their vendor of choice for BSM solutions. These companies embraced BSM because it has

proven time and again to be effective in addressing the critical challenges that consistently rank among their

top IT priorities, year after year:

• Minimize Risk: Reduce the risks caused by infrastructure changes

• Communicate Value: Show how IT meets and exceeds the needs of the business

• Manage Impact: Mitigate the business impact of outages and other IT problems when they occur

The bottom line is that when applications fail and

outages or slowdowns occur, the business top-line

suffers—often dramatically. In one recent example, an appliance manufacturer recently attributed US$64

million in lost revenues to a three-day outage of its in-store inventory reorder kiosk.

Enter Novell® Business Service Management. This solution lets companies more effectively monitor and

manage the availability and performance of the applications and services they deliver to the business.

B u s i n e s s S e r v i c e M a n a g e m e n t D e f i n e d

Analysts all offer their own definitions for BSM. But when all is said and done, it’s the users’ definition that

rings most true. When asked, actual users define

BSM as software that provides four essential capabilities:

• Maps technology to applications to the business

• Creates a trusted source for IT and the business

• Turns data into powerful intelligence

• Makes visualization relevant to a diverse community

And what about all those other critical IT initiatives you hear about, such as ITIL; configuration management

database (CMDB); service level management (SLM); application, business process or project monitoring;

availability and performance dashboards—how does BSM fit in with these? Actually, all these initiatives are

part of the Novell BSM solution, which consists of a suite of applications that can work separately or all

together—and are all part of a single common “BSM platform.” In this way, companies adopt BSM in a

modular fashion—implementing only those capabilities that address their immediate needs, while leaving

room for growth and adoption of other BSM applications as the company grows and needs change.

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Figure 2: Novell Solutions

N o v e l l B u s i n e s s S e r v i c e M a n a g e m e n t S o l u t i o n S u m m a r y

Novell BSM consists of an integrated suite, or fabric, of applications, each running on a centralized platform

that provides common services across each application. Novell BSM applications can be implemented

individually or in combination to solve even the most complex monitoring challenges. In addition, at Novell,

we bring together the software, services and best practices that make sense for each project.

Using unique object-oriented technology, Novell provides an easy-to-implement, modular suite of solutions,

so you can adopt specific applications that solve your specific challenges. You can start with any of the

Novell solution offerings and grow from there. You can also feel confident that all Novell solutions work

seamlessly together.

And because we leverage your exiting IT investments, implementing Novell solutions is fast and easy; it

often takes fewer than 90 days.

To give you a better idea just how Novell BSM solutions can benefit your IT organization, take a look at the

following summary of our features and capabilities.

Novell CMDB360™ Novell CMDB360 and Novell myCMDB™ products represent the next generation in CMDB technology.

Integrating core CMDB capabilities such as reconciliation, federation, visualization and synchronization,

CMDB360 adds a variety of advanced features for complex data analytics and reporting. What’s more,

CMDB360 automates a number of implementation, configuration and operational aspects of CMDB

management—making CMDB360 one of the easiest CMDB solutions to deploy.

And because CMDB360 is built on a fully federated, object-based model, companies using CMDB360 can

not only leverage the trusted data sources they already have in place and thereby reduce deployment costs,

they can also be assured that their CMDB will be flexible enough to adapt to any changes in business need

or direction, for years to come.

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Novell myCMDB Novell myCMDB is an internet-based application that complements CMDB360 – as well as any other new or

existing CMDB project by solving the CMDB data accuracy and accessibility issues incumbent with today's

CMDB implementations. By integrating principles of Web 2.0 and social networking into a new web-based

application, myCMDB delivers role-based “communities” where users can more easily and effectively view

and interact with CMDB data – and other CMDB users as well.

By combining Facebook* interactivity, Wikipedia* information quality management, and Google* search-

model capabilities -- myCMDB transforms the CMDB into a more valuable, user-friendly environment, which,

in turn, drives greater usage across the enterprise. And when more users contribute to the CMDB, it

naturally becomes a more accurate representation of the actual IT infrastructure.

Novel Business Service Manager Most large IT organizations use any number of IT network, systems and applications management tools to

monitor the health of their enterprise. With these tools come silos of information that must be manually

correlated making effective end-to-end enterprise availability and performance management a daunting,

resource-intensive task. Novell Business Service Manager consolidates essential IT management data, key

performance indicators (KPIs) and business metrics into a role-based, single-pane-of-glass dashboard. By

using integrated analytics, such as impact and root cause analysis, IT operations can monitor and manage

their complete end-to-end environment in real-time and reduce IT outages by 50 to 70 percent, or more.

Novell myMO Dashboards Dashboards provide an effective way to empower business and IT management with the accurate, real-time

and historical information necessary to running a successful and competitive business. We deliver those

dashboards in the Novell myMO™ Dashboards interface. Novell dashboards are Web 2.0 compliant and can

be easily tailored to any specific IT role, business role or information need—whether it’s critical network or

systems availability or important trading application performance. In addition, Novell myMO Dashboards

serve as a common intuitive and interactive interface across all Novell solutions. This enables users to more

easily learn each new product, as well as to more easily transition from one solution to the next.

Service Level Management Novell Business Service Level Manager™ enables organizations to measure and report on IT service level

quality. This allows them to more effectively deliver high-quality IT services to the business in terms that are

meaningful to the business. Because Novell Business Service Level Manager works with service level

agreements (SLAs) in real-time or historically, IT organizations can accurately ensure that they meet

committed levels of IT service quality. What's more, Business Service Level Manager has built-in predictive

algorithms that allow you to see SLA compliance trends before they actually become non-compliant.

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N O V E L L K E Y D I F F E R E N T I A T O R S

A u t o m a t e d S t a t e - D r i v e n S e r v i c e M o d e l

The Novell BSM solution is a Web-based solution built with common, standards-based technologies,

including Java, CORBA, XML and IIOP. Through rich bi-directional integration adapters, our BSM solution

correlates your existing technology data in everything from IT asset, network and systems management to

topology maps and rule sets. Regarding application and user performance, Novell BSM has built-in

capabilities to directly monitor a variety of resources. Our solutions can even integrate, correlate and

reconcile business metrics from databases—like sales totals and helpdesk tickets, or analytics from

business intelligence tools—with existing technology data.

When BSM integrates IT management or business metric data, it automatically generates a service model of

your IT infrastructure. It captures everything from the components it comprises, to the services each

component supports, as well as the relationships between services and components. Once this model is

created, these solutions use IT and business data to update not only the model, but also the state of each

element within the model. Through this state-driven service model, you can monitor, manage and visualize

not only the physical elements within the IT infrastructure, but also the logical entities as well. The Novell

service model provides a unique view of your IT operations. It shows you your environment as a series of IT

services, each having logical and physical elements grouped together to form one or more IT services that

represent the actual processes the business uses. Figure 3 shows an example of one such business

process (online trading), and how any large financial services institution today might use it.

Figure 3: Novell Service Mode l

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Figure 4: Novell myMO Interface

The power of the service model lies in its flexibility. Objects in the model can represent not only physical

elements, like a server or application, but also logical entities as well, such as an online trading business

service. The model also reflects the ways in which objects interact with each other, such as how response-

time data relates to server-to-server communication. This interaction is a critical strength of the Novell

service model.

T h e N o v e l l B S M F a b r i c — A n O p e n a n d E x t e n s i b l e P l a t f o r m

As we’ve already seen, the Novell BSM

solution consists of a suite of applications that

work together to solve complex IT and

configuration management issues. Each of

these applications is built on a single

integrated platform. This platform is an open

and extensible set of common services,

analytics and reporting capabilities—all based

on a single Web 2.0 myMO Dashboard

interface—that deliver significant benefits for

Novell users. In this way, as users switch from

one BSM application to another, the basic

interface stays the same—there is no new

learning curve.

This same paradigm applies to all aspects of the Novell

BSM solution. Whether it is building a new report or analyzing root cause on the latest IT outage the

commands, interfaces and operations remain consistent.

And because Novell BSM solutions are both open and extensible, adding new features or integrating

capabilities from our partner products is a straightforward operation. This protects existing software

investments and ensures flexibility for all future procurement decisions. What’s more, we fully support

today’s new and emerging standards for open architectures, including the service-oriented architecture, or

SOA. In fact, Novell solutions fit perfectly into any SOA environment and compliment the environment. Our

solutions act as an agent to surface and visualize non-SOA information within the IT enterprise. This is

especially important when integrating business metrics and other non-IT data.

W e b 2 . 0 - b a s e d D a s h b o a r d I n t e r f a c e

To deliver fast and flexible visualization to IT operations and other end users, our solutions leverage a

unique, role-based visualization capability called Novell myMO Dashboards. Novell myMO Dashboards

provide an interactive JSR 168 compliant “single-pane-of-glass” view that consolidates IT management,

performance and business metric information into one, easily customized, role-based, real-time dashboard.

The key advantage of myMO Dashboards lie in its ability to correlate and visualize consolidated information.

p. 9

It does this not as a series of IT components, but rather as the logical set of IT services supporting overlying

business processes. Examples of these dashboards are depicted in the figure 5 below.

Figure 5: Role-based Dashboards—Examples

It’s important to note that myMO Dashboards are not just another “pretty picture”; it actually sends full bi-

directional command and control capabilities back into the network, systems and application management

tools from which it gathers and correlates data.

U n i v e r s a l I n t e g r a t i o n One of the fundamental strengths of Novell BSM solutions is their ability to integrate virtually any IT

management, asset, configuration, helpdesk or business metric data source. For companies looking to

protect their existing investments in IT management software, this is an important capability.

To achieve such pervasive integration capabilities, we provide more than 70 out-of-the-box adapters that

you can install in a few hours. This means integrating virtually any multi-vendor data into a BSM

environment is fast and easy. We’ll take a closer look at this technology later in this paper.

A c c u r a t e C o n f i g u r a t i o n M o d e l i n g While effective operations management is a high priority for every IT manager, most companies today still

take a reactive approach to IT management and fix problems only after they surface, rather than focusing on

problem prevention. Yet, up to 60 percent or more of today’s outages are avoidable. This is because most

outages today are caused by changes made to the IT infrastructure, either planned or unplanned. Giving

SLA Compliance IT Management

Order Processing Availability Management Call Center Monitoring

Telecom Services

p. 10

companies’ better control over IT change management is what Novell CMDB360 and myCMDB are all

about.

Through sophisticated technology that combines federation, discovery, relationship mapping, reconciliation

and synchronization, IT organizations can perform impact analysis of proposed changes to their

infrastructure before they are put into production. Even when unplanned changes wreak havoc on enterprise

stability, Novell CMDB360 and myCMDB can help speed remediation by giving accurate root cause analysis

in real-time. This isolates and minimizes the risk of encountering potentially major configuration problems.

With the advanced analytics in

Novell CMDB360 and

myCMDB, companies can not

only understand impact

analysis in complex IT

environments, they can also

take a more proactive

approach to managing their IT

environment. For instance,

most companies today have

instrumented only about 50 to 70

percent of their total IT

environment. In other words, at

least one-third of today’s IT

enterprises are not managed

by a network or systems

management tool. This leaves tremendous potential for unplanned failures. Through CMDB360 and

myCMDB, companies can produce gap reports (Figure 6) that show which IT components are instrumented

(i.e., which have agents, and which do not). In this way, companies can take a more proactive approach in

instrumenting more of their infrastructure, so problems are found sooner and outages are minimized.

This same modeling approach can be applied to complex analyses such as reconciliation, which involves

understanding when changes occur to the infrastructure that do not have associated trouble tickets.

Figure 6: Gap Analysis

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F e d e r a t e d C o n f i g u r a t i o n M a n a g e m e n t D a t a b a s e Novell CMDB solutions provide a fully

integrated and fully federated

configuration management database and

service catalog. Novell CMDB360 and

myCMDB work to unify federated CMDB

information that is distributed across the

enterprise. They do this not by relying

upon extensive extract transfer load (ETL)

processes to build a centralized copy of

CMDB data, but rather, by working with

Novell BSM’s existing integration

capabilities. It aggregates IT

management, asset and configuration

data already in place to formulate a real-

time visual representation of the

underlying IT configuration (Figure 7).

To ensure CMDB360 and myCMDB represent a complete view of the IT enterprise, Novell also offers a topology discovery tool to find and map critical IT elements that are beyond the control and visibility of existing management systems. We call our discovery solution Novell Business Technology Insight (BTI). Leveraging the integration capabilities in Novell’s BSM solutions, combined with BTI’s pervasive topology discovery capabilities, CMDB360 and myCMDB can comprehensively visualize the IT infrastructure through a complete service catalog.

Just as importantly, because CMDB360, myCMDB and BTI tools understand when changes occur within your enterprise in real-time, you always have an accurate and up-to-date view of your CMDB.

Figure 7: Novell CMDB360

CMDB360

Web 2.0

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A D E T A I L E D L O O K A T N O V E L L B S M S O L U T I O N S

N o v e l l A r c h i t e c t u r e Novell BSM Solutions are built on a three-tier architecture to deliver effective IT service management and

configuration modeling capabilities: integration, intelligence and visualization (Figure 8).

The Novell BSM architecture builds on a foundational integration layer in which we consolidate virtually any

IT management, asset or configuration data source into a single, easy-to-use command and control console.

Our solutions leverage a unique, object-based intelligence layer to correlate enterprise-wide IT management

information into business service views that graphically show the state of health for each critical IT service.

The Novell BSM intelligence layer provides the backbone of our architecture. It’s here that common

services such as normalization, aggregation and correlation occur. Other services critical to effective IT

operations management are also handled here. Functions such as relationship mapping and root cause and

impact analysis originate here. Finally, automations for problem determination, notification and remediation

are also handled within the intelligence layer.

The primary visualization mechanism into BSM solutions is through the intuitive and role-based myMO

Dashboard interface. Alternatively, administrative functions can also be accomplished through a separate

Java-based operations console. Either way, our solutions let you know in real-time when there’s trouble with

your key business applications or infrastructure. More importantly, because Novell BSM solutions provide

Figure 8: Novell Business Service Management Three-tier Architecture

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complete command and control capabilities, drilling down to find and fix individual IT components is rapid

and straightforward.

In the following sections, we’ll take a closer look at each of these layers and the capabilities they provide.

M u l t i - V e n d o r D a t a I n t e g r a t i o n

Built with Internet-driven technologies, including Java and XML, the object-oriented integration model in

Novell BSM solutions gives companies a way to integrate nearly any source of management data.

The result is a normalized format for all the different kinds of data that relate to the infrastructure’s many

different components. It’s the first step toward a complete BSM solution, and it can provide real value. After

all, getting disparate management data down to a single screen means IT doesn’t have to juggle multiple

management consoles. Instead, all operational data is expressed on a single pane of glass, giving IT a

comprehensive understanding of the infrastructure’s status and availability. Many companies have also been

able to use the information gathered in integration to reduce redundant management licenses and more

efficiently use their resources.

B r i n g i n g i n M a n a g e m e n t D a t a

To bring in management data, we provide four points of

integration:

• Adapters

• Novell Event Integrator

• Novell Script Adapter

• Proxy integration (with an existing adapter and external management tool)

The Novell approach to integration enables companies to

leverage existing technology, while ensuring that any

changes—such as the addition of new tools or services—can

be easily accommodated. Let’s take a closer look at each of

these integration technologies.

N o v e l l B S M A d a p t e r s

Our solutions use adapters to connect to and interact with

management systems such as CA* Unicenter* TNG, Tivoli*

T/EC, BMC* PATROL, HP* OpenView*, IBM* Tivoli Netcool

and others. Adapters reside on the Novell BSM server as Java extensions, or plug-ins. Adapters are

configured with a one-to-one relationship, where one adapter talks to a specific management tool. Adapters

utilize an integration method associated with the management system vendors’ interfaces, often replicating

the consoles or management applications. The full capabilities and scope of a management application for a

given system is surfaced through the adapter. We call this principle “View and Do“—almost anything a user

can view or do within a management application is available via the adapter. This is because Novell BSM

What is an adapter? An adapter is

the integration point that allows the

server to connect to a third-party

management system, such as HP

OpenView or T/EC. Different adapters

exist for each different third-party

management system, and each is

written to the specific API that

integrates bi-directionally with that

system. In some cases the adapter

communicates directly to the

management system, in other cases,

the communication is brokered through

a Novell supplied object request broker

(ORB).

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adapters are fully integrated at the API level; they’re not simple SNMP traps. As such, our adapters have

full, bi-directional communication control with each of the subsystems with which they interface.

These adapters are configured with a one-to-one relationship, where one adapter talks to a specific

management system. Novell BSM solutions come with support for a variety of industry standard network and

systems management tools. A complete list of supported management systems and instructions for

integrating and creating adapters for each one is listed later on in this section.

In some cases, the integration of some management tools is accomplished using a proxy, through an

intermediary management platform. For example, EMC* SMARTS InCharge or Compaq* Insight Manager

can provide status, availability and event data to SNMP management platforms such as HP OpenView,

Tivoli NetView*, CA Unicenter NSM and others.

In addition, Novell Event Integrator and Novell Universal Adapter can each be configured to gather ASCII-

based data from generic sources such as log files, database tables, TCP/IP sockets and others. This raw

data can be passed to our solutions for event processing. The specific requirements for all data sources

should be identified before designing a solution.

The following is a complete list of the management tools our solutions currently supports through adapters:

Network and Systems Management Adapters • BladeLogic

• BMC Software Business Event Manager

• BMC Software PATROL ENTERPRISE MANAGER (PEM)

• BMC Software PATROL

• BMC Software Remedy ARS

• CA SPECTRUM

• CA Unicenter NSM

• Cisco InfoCenter

• CiscoWorks2000 Device Fault Manager

• Compuware Vantage

• EMC SMARTS InCharge

• HP OpenView Network Node Manager (NNM)

• HP OpenView Operations for Unix (formerly ITO)

• IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console (T/EC)

• IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console (T/EC+)

• IBM Tivoli NetView

• IBM Micromuse Netcool/OMNIbus

• IT Masters MasterCell

• Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM)

• NetIQ AppManager

• Novell File/XML

• Novell SNMPc

• SNMPc

p. 15

• SolarWinds Orion Network Performance Monitor

• SolarWinds Cirrus Configuration Manager

Novell Adapters • Novell ZENworks Configuration Manager

• Novell ZENworks Linux Manager

• PlateSpin Recon

• PlateSpin Orchestrate

• Sentinel

Service Desk / Asset Management Adapters • HP Peregrine ServiceCenter

• Remedy ARS

Discovery Adapters • Novell Business Technology Insight (Novell agentless, appliance-based discovery which provides both

active and passive discovery capabilities)

• IBM Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager (Collation Confignia)

• HP Mercury Interactive MAM (Mercury Application Mapping)

• Symantec Clarity (Relicore)

• Tideway Foundation

• EMC ADM

Novell Service-Based Adapters • ABB/IESO

• Arcsite

• BMC Atrium

• BMC Control-M

• BMC Configuration Manager (Marimba)

• CA Unicenter CA-7 Job Management

• CA Unicenter CA-OPS

• CalAmp TelAlert

• Compuware Vantage

• Concord eHealth Suite

• Gomez Performance Network

• HP (Mercury Interactive) SiteScope Log F

• HP (Mercury Interactive) Topaz

• HP OpenView Internet Services

• HP Service Desk

• HP Universal CMDB

• IBM Tivoli Candle Omegaview

• IBM Tivoli ITM 6.1 (via Tivoli Event Integration Facility – TEIF)

• IntegraSolv Owl

• Invoq Systems AlarmPoint

p. 16

• N.E.T IDNX T1

• Nagios

• NetScout

• Nimsoft Nimbus

• Opnet ACE

• ProactiveNet

• Quest Spotlight

• RiverSoft

• Spong

• up.time.3

• WhatsUp Gold

• Zenoss

• ZoneLabs ZoneAlarm

Novell Management Tools and Extensible Adapters • Business Data Integrator (BDI)

• Business Experience Manager (BEM)

• Event Integrator (Eve)

• File/XML (FX Adapter)

• Guard Adapter (High side and low side data security)

• SNMP Integrator

• Universal Adapter

Our BSM solutions also offer a Novell-to-Novell adapter called the Novell InterConnection Adapter (ICA).

This adapter enables IT to connect multiple Novell servers across companies, departments, partners,

suppliers and firewalls. With this capability, companies can create business service console or dashboard

views using elements from multiple Novell BSM servers.

N o v e l l B u s i n e s s D a t a I n t e g r a t o r

With Business Data Integrator (BDI) companies can integrate into the Novell BSM environment. They can

integrate business metrics from databases, including sales totals and helpdesk tickets, or even analytics

from business intelligence tools.

The data a BDI adapter extracts is forwarded to the Novell BSM server for correlation, analysis and

visualization and can be further leveraged through Novell myMO Dashboards.

Metrics from your data store can help surface key performance indicators (KPIs) that your business uses to

measure success. For instance, we can correlate KPIs from daily sales revenue versus helpdesk tickets.

Using myMO Dashboards, IT or business users can isolate specific applications or IT service performance

or availability issues that are affecting top-line revenue.

Through this business service analysis, an increase in calls to a call center or a drop in revenue may be

important warning signal of technology problems. Tying technology problems to their real business impact—

p. 17

like the number of customers complaining—gives you a more accurate way to prioritize IT issues. Analyzing

this information over time can even help you spot trends, such as a drop in sales totals when response time

dips below a certain threshold. It can also help you set cost-effective performance thresholds for different

geographies, customer groups and time periods.

A simple point-and-click interface makes accessing and leveraging database information easy without

having to be a database expert. BDI automatically discovers the available schemas in any relational

database, including DB2*, Oracle*, SQL Server*, and Sybase*. Then, it uses point-and-click operations to

select which fields or values to integrate, as well as the frequency at which data should be captured. And if

the data is returned, BDI discovers how Novell BSM solutions should determine the severity of the element

or alarm.

Because BDI has a central management facility, the integrations you define can be stored and re-used. This

is valuable to organizations with many instances of the same database distributed throughout the

environment.

N o v e l l E v e n t I n t e g r a t o r

Novell Event Integrator is a way to receive, filter, de-duplicate and normalize line-oriented event data from

nearly any source, such as the mainframe environment or telecommunications devices. It transforms a raw

data stream into a coherent, derived event stream, which the server subsequently treats as a series of

Novell and associated alarms. The Event Integrator agent can receive data from a local or remote TCP/IP

socket, as well as from a communication port or program running on the Event Integrator agent platform.

Using a rule set, the Event Integrator agent identifies, parses, filters, normalizes and generates derived

events or alarms from the incoming ASCII data stream. Derived events or alarms are then forwarded from

the Event Integrator modules up to the server. Forwarding takes place via the Event Integrator adapter

running on the server.

The Novell Event Integrator has its own multi-tiered architecture, where the agent passes information

through intermediate collection points within the managed environment up to the adapter residing on the

server.

N o v e l l U n i v e r s a l A d a p t e r

The Novell Universal Adapter provides the ability to “front-end” a

generalized event adapter with a Novell Universal program to

preprocess incoming data. The Novell Universal Adapter provides a

straightforward approach for integrating external data sources into

BSM solutions in cases where the raw, incoming data can be

collected and formatted using scripting. A company might use this

adapter to integrate data from niche or homegrown management

tools.

“By understanding how our

resources are working to

deliver service, we can

resolve problems earlier,

reducing the impact on our

customers and the need for

site visits, yielding time and

cost savings”

Andrew Cunningham, Manager, ASP Management Systems, Reuters

p. 18

P r o x y I n t e g r a t i o n

Many of the management tools that our solutions integrate with out-of-the-box can receive information from

a variety of other environments, such as the mainframe. For example, IBM’s NetView OS/390 has the ability

to route alerts to Tivoli T/EC, and BMC Software’s MainView has the ability to route event information to

BMC Software PATROL Enterprise Manager.

Our ability to integrate directly with these outboard management tools could easily be used as the

communication vehicle for bringing other types of data under the umbrella of the Novell BSM server.

D a t a N o r m a l i z a t i o n Novell BSM solutions translate data into a common format through a process called normalization. The

Novell Server accomplishes this using Novell Definition Language (NDL).

U n d e r s t a n d i n g N D L

NDL consists of a data type definition (DTD) that follows rules for structuring an XML document. Declaring

objects and their attributes in a DTD provides the structure for presenting information in a useful form. An

integrated HierarchyFile reflects both the nature of information received from a management system and the

processing logic of the Novell BSM environment. The HierarchyFile DTD defines objects and their attributes

that constitute the rules or grammar for structuring the HierarchyFile. As information comes in, it cascades

through the XML structure (the body of the HierarchyFile). It is then assigned a place in the object hierarchy.

A hierarchy can be technology-focused, as in the case of a collection of Web servers. It can also be

business-focused, as in the case of a collection of Web servers that support a particular service, such as

order processing.

Basically, Novell BSM solutions receive streams of events from network management systems and convert

these events into alarms. NDL parses the HierarchyFile to create a hierarchy of objects with attached alarms

that are displayed on the Explorer pane of the BSM client browser (Figure 8). Each container or group or

generator received from the management system becomes a BSM object.

H o w A l a r m s A r e P r o p a g a t e d

As an incoming alarm cascades through the HierarchyFile, it attaches to an object when specific alarm

parameter values match the criteria specified in the HierarchyFile. In the BSM client, the alarm is displayed

in the Alarms window for the element.

For instance, when BSM receives an alarm, it examines each field within the alarm. Because alarms from

different products may associate different values to particular fields, IT can use NDL to first assign uniform

values. This “tokenizes” the original fields, enabling BSM to drop them into the uniform fields that IT has

determined. Next, NDL allows IT to select the standard field that will define objects.

The result is that companies have unprecedented flexibility in determining what their normalized events will

look like. Once this is done, Novell BSM solutions can relate different kinds of data, like network data and

applications data, to one another.

p. 19

A correlation example: Consider the

technology that supports a shipping

company. When two of the company’s

servers slow down, the one that supports

the tracking and guiding of packages

should be fixed before the one that

supports some minor internal application.

But if the shipping company doesn’t know

which servers support what services, it

can’t make that kind of decision – until

business users, or even customers,

complain. Service correlation is a way for

the company not only to see which servers

are slow, but also to understand exactly

how the latency is impacting the business.

The result is that IT can make the right

decision and, in the process, improve

service.

Some management tools can provide event filtering and management capabilities that are similar to those

found in BSM solutions. However, these tools do not translate that information into an object format, which

means they cannot provide normalization capabilities across other management tools. The result is that a

similar cross-environment view—one that includes interrelationships among different types of data—can’t be

provided. Yet it is this kind of view that is essential to understanding how the state of your infrastructure is

impacting the state of business services.

O b j e c t C o r r e l a t i o n The BSM server correlates multi-vendor IT management event information to determine the state of objects

within the BSM environment. Objects can be physical, such as a server or a database, or they can be

logical, such as an application or a business service. It’s what enables you to tell, for instance, how a slow

server impacts customers’ ability to log in to an e-commerce application. Correlation is one of the core

services provided by the BSM server.

Object correlation is critical to effective IT management

because each of today’s network and systems

management systems focuses on a different aspect of IT

management. In one example, BMC Patrol provides

detailed events governing a wide spectrum of operational

aspects of IT infrastructure management. On the other

hand, Mercury Interactive focuses strictly on performance

and response time. When combined, this collective

information represents a powerful picture of the overall

health or “state” of a specific objects, or set of objects. The

tough part lies in correlating the data across disparate

management systems to project a single picture of each

component or IT service.

Before correlation can work effectively, BSM users must

first logically group the various physical IT components of

their infrastructure to formulate the services provided to the

business. This process is about more than lumping related

resources together. It’s about associating logical

relationships across physical devices to form a logical set

of interrelationships that represent an IT or business service.

Companies can group resources according to their physical representation, such as by server, application or

DNS. More importantly, they can also group them according to different business representations. For

instance, an online retailer could create a hierarchy for the technology that supports CD sales. Underneath

the CD sales hierarchy would be groupings for the Web servers, databases and other components that

support this service. BSM drag-and-drop capabilities make the creation of such hierarchies simple. IT could,

for instance, drag a certain grouping of Web servers it created for the technology hierarchy over to the CD

sales hierarchy, rather than re-creating the grouping.

p. 20

Resource grouping can be performed either bottom-up or top-down. Many companies choose the latter

approach – that is, they pick the business services that are most important and then determine the

supporting technology resources. This allows companies to implement Novell BSM solutions service by

service, on their own timetable. It also enables them to start with just a partial picture of their infrastructure,

rather having to first build a complete one.

Service Correlation

After you’ve determined which resources support what services, you can then use the drag-and-drop

procedure to visualize selected assets in a business context. For example, a manufacturing company could

view the chain of technology resources that supports procurement—a concept we’ll discuss further in the

Visualization section. But first, it’s important to understand how Novell BSM is able to define the

relationships between rational groups and actual services.

When Novell integrates with a management tool, it automatically produces a hierarchy of objects that

represent the data supplied by that tool. As we were discussing in the Data Normalization topic above, users

are also able to construct hierarchies of objects that can represent data not necessarily associated with a

management tool, as well

as hierarchies of objects

that are not typically

thought of as data. In fact,

these objects can

encapsulate elements

ranging from very granular

components to entire layers

of the underlying

technology, such as

servers, applications, databases, users and the network.

This flexibility enables companies to create a hierarchy of

objects that represents a complete business service. For

instance, a financial services company could create a

hierarchy that represents the ability of end users to perform

online trades.

Novell BSM provides a layer of abstraction above the

physical elements ordinarily seen through management tools.

With this capability, you can associate information from management tools with any other type of

information, including business service information. Service correlation, then, is the ability to understand how

a change in the state of an object—whatever that object might be—affects a change in the state of a

business service.

Figure 9: Sample Business Service Console Views

p. 21

V i s u a l i z a t i o n

No matter what stage of a BSM implementation a company is in, visualization is what delivers the key

benefits. Novell BSM visualization capabilities start with Java* software. Java provides the client views into

the information on the BSM server.

Users have two client choices for accessing information on the server: they can have a local installation on

the client itself (with preinstalled Java software), or they can use a Java plug-in on the browser. Either way,

users receive complete functionality. It’s also important to note that any type of client can be used to access

the information on the BSM server, as Java is platform independent. In contrast, other management tools

support only NT- or X-Windows-based clients.

Because you can use any client, the only thing left to determine is, what do you want users to be able to

see? Novell BSM solutions display IT management and other information from its server through one of two

visualization mechanisms. It can display this information as represented through either a business service

console—the client view of BSM (Figure 9) or through Novell myMO Dashboards—the browser based

dashboard view of BSM information (Figure 10, next page).

T h e V a l u e i n B S M V i s u a l i z a t i o n

BSM console and dashboard visualization is customizable and secure. It shows companies the

management information they need, in a form relevant to specific needs—from a top-line business

perspective all the way down to the state of specific IT elements. As a result, a network technician can

Figure 10: Sample Dashboard Views

p. 22

access detailed device or alarm information, while management can view the high-level status of key

business processes.

Along with abstracting and presenting data, BSM visualization enables IT to drill down and invoke underlying

management tools commands and functions as needed for BSM. Because views can be delivered over the

Web through BSM Web-based display, all underlying management tools are Web-enabled as necessary for

BSM. The result is that companies have one point from which to manage potential issues, as well as the

business context they need to prioritize them.

One of the advantages of BSM visualization lies in its variety. Other management tools generally provide

views that are specific to the type of information they collect. Event-centric products, for example, will

provide a color-coded event list as their primary view. In contrast, Novell BSM provides a real-time

representation of the state of everything it’s aware of, even if that information is across multiple domains.

B u i l d i n g C o n s o l e s a n d D a s h b o a r d s Novell BSM leverages built-in adapter technology to integrate any number of physical or logical elements

throughout the IT enterprise. So rather than start from scratch, companies have predefined objects to work

with. As already noted, BSM dashboard and console views are built once the necessary information is

compiled, whether that information is just integrated data from different management tools or the chain of

resources that support a key service. The point is that these views are useful at all stages of a BSM

implementation.

Another way companies expedite the construction of dashboards and console views are through the Novell

ViewBuilder, a tool included in the Novell BSM solution. It configures the BSM server to support the

automated construction—as well as maintenance—of BSM visualization. The ViewBuilder works by

accepting an XML stream, which it uses to dynamically define the views.

C o n f i g u r i n g a n d D e p l o y i n g N o v e l l B S M V i s u a l i z a t i o n Novell BSM uses a Java-based client, which enables views to be configured on the BSM server and

deployed to the client. Because BSM views are configured at the server, they are much easier to distribute.

Using the Novell myMO Dashboards, companies can access BSM information through a Java Server Page

(JSP) tag layer. These tags function as an extra layer of intelligence. They are able to access BSM internal

data store and extract information. Companies can use them to build different dashboard components,

which supplement the pre-built components included such as:

• Alarm component

• Performance component

• Properties component (to view element properties from an organizational, alarm or customized perspective)

• Chart components (to view data in various charts, such as pie and bar charts)

Novell BSM dashboard information is completely customizable. Because it’s part of a dashboard, it can be

distributed over the Web, to any authorized user with a Web browser. In other words, users do not have to

p. 23

install a BSM client or any other extra software on their machines, which frees them from being tied to a

particular machine or operating system.

A key benefit of using Novell myMO Dashboards are that companies can view BSM information side by side

with other key business metrics. For instance, a financial company could view how technology is supporting

the ability to trade, side by side with information on trading volume. A service provider—or an internal IT

organization acting as a service provider to its business users—could use dashboards to quickly and easily

show customers exactly how technology is impacting service. Viewers don’t need additional software, nor do

they require any special training.

S e c u r i t y For securely distributing information within a company and outside its boundaries, you can configure Novell

BSM to use secure sockets layer (SSL) technology. SSL is the industry-leading standard method for

protecting Web communications. The SSL security protocol provides data encryption, server authentication,

message integrity and optional client authentication for any TCP/IP connection. Within BSM, these features

ensure fully encrypted communications and prevent unauthorized access to management information or

functions.

In particular, the BSM server will only accept access via HTTPs and bi-directional-IIOP-over-SSL

communications protocols, using SSL to encrypt these data streams. This has the advantage of encrypting

all data streams between the BSM server and its clients, Web users and remote BSM servers, which may be

a requirement when users access BSM over unsecured public networks.

Using SSL within Novell BSM solutions enables companies to gain key security capabilities, such as:

• Authorization, through access control lists and permission sets

• Authentication, through the public key infrastructure (PKI)

• Confidentiality, through SSL and Transport Layer Security (TLS)

This level of security is absolutely necessary for implementing BSM technologies across different business

units, suppliers and/or partners.

A M O D U L A R A P P R O A C H T O B S M Because Novell BSM solutions are built on a modular and extensible fabric, companies can start with the

solutions that are meaningful today, and then continue to build greater value by adding applications,

services or capabilities over time—from Novell or other vendors. In fact, the open architecture of Novell BSM

solutions not only makes multi-vendor application fast and simple, it can automate substantial parts of the

process as well. Let’s take a look…

A u t o m a t i o n

The centralized automation capabilities in Novell BSM eliminate the need to use and maintain each

underlying management tool’s scripting features. Users can instead use BSM to easily send e-mail or pages,

create trouble tickets, or perform any corrective action in response to changes in the managed environment.

This results in faster problem identification and resolution, as well as improved operational efficiency. Of

p. 24

course, companies do not lose underlying automation capabilities when they implement BSM. Underlying

tools, in other words, can still enact their corresponding automation capabilities.

Novell BSM offers two types of automation: server-initiated and operator-initiated. With server-initiated

automation, the BSM server can be instructed to launch a script in response to different factors, like an

object or event state-change or the receipt of an event. Although users have the ability to customize and

build environment- or business-service related scripts to fit individual needs, BSM also includes a series of

pre-built scripts that will take action out of the box, based on a specific event. Through operator-initiated

automation, the operator can, using a client machine, launch any program from a list of options provided

through a right-click menu.

Automation within an object-based environment where events are associated with business services can

offer significant advantages. Consider a case where the connections to two servers are lost. The kind of

automation that most management tools provide would, based on corresponding event messages, open

trouble tickets for both servers, which would require some kind of action to be taken at a later time to close

the tickets.

In contrast, BSM automation capabilities can leverage the existing object hierarchy to make more efficient

decisions. Novell BSM, for instance, can determine that one lost connection was with a server that—in an e-

commerce example—handles the posting of customer feedback and the other was with a server that

handles customer transactions. Clearly, these servers would require different automated actions. While

issuing a trouble ticket might be effective for the server supporting customer feedback, that kind of response

would not be the best way to reestablish connection for the server supporting transactions, a business

service that is essential to the e-commerce company’s success. In sum, basing automation capabilities on

business priorities ensures that each event gets an appropriate response.

R e p o r t i n g

Novell BSM incorporates a variety of built-in

reports (Figure 11). In addition, we enable

BSM data to be exported to various reporting

tools, such as Crystal reports. Companies can

use this capability to generate reports on

various managed objects. It’s important to

remember that an object can be anything

from a server to an overall service. For

instance, an online retailer could set up an

automated procedure that writes to the

reporting tool each time there is a state-

change in its books division. The retailer

could then compare the results of these

reports against other key performance

indicators, like book sales over the same time

period. Figure 11: Sample Response Time and Outage Reports

p. 25

S U M M A R Y O F N O V E L L B S M K E Y B E N E F I T S Novell BSM solutions let companies more effectively monitor, manage and model their enterprise

infrastructures. Novell BSM integrates existing investments in asset, configuration, network and systems

management software into a centralized service-based console to let IT organizations find and fix

infrastructure issues before they impact end-user availability or performance.

Through its powerful configuration management capabilities, BSM lets IT organizations model changes to

their infrastructures before they are implemented in production. In doing this, IT positioned to proactively

prevent outages before they occur.

All of this is accomplished through a unique service perspective that lets companies manage their

infrastructures, not as individual components, but as the set of services IT delivers to the business. In this

way, IT organizations wield a much more powerful mechanism to discover and remediate problems before

end-users experience outages or slowdowns.

So what does this mean for the bottom line? Quite simply, BSM delivers fast ROI while at the same time

requiring a low investment in capital and resources. Here are just some of the ways in which BSM can

benefit your organization:

Improves Availability of Revenue-generating Services When companies understand how technology impacts business, they can focus their resources where it

counts: on revenue generating services. BSM enables IT to prioritize availability or performance issues and

apply necessary resource to those issues most critical to running the business.

Significantly Reduces the Risk of Outages Due to Changes in the IT Infrastructure Through the configuration modeling capabilities in BSM, companies can determine the impact of potential

infrastructure changes, before they actually implemented. What’s more, the powerful modeling analytics in

BSM allows users to more quickly understand when unplanned changes have occurred within the

enterprise. Further, because BSM can isolate unplanned changes and determine their impact, the risks

associated with unplanned change are substantially mitigated.

Improves IT’s Accountability to the Business Novell BSM empowers business and IT management with a real-time representation of how the business is

doing, rather than lists of events and alarms. This keeps executives in the know. This not only helps keep

them satisfied, but can also help them make better business decisions.

Makes Organizations More Adaptable to Change The agnostic approach of Novell BSM enables companies to leverage all that they’ve invested in

technology. At the same time, it ensures that companies will have freedom of choice when it comes to

selecting new tools and technology standards. Having an open and extensible platform also means that new

services, partners and suppliers can be easily integrated into your BSM capabilities.

p. 26

Enhances Staff Productivity Novell BSM gives IT one platform from which to integrate and interpret data from management tools, log

files, event streams, mainframes and more. This way, your people need training on one platform, instead of

all the resources that lie underneath. It’s a way to support increasing amounts of technology with the same

number of people. Furthermore, the remote capabilities in BSM mean staff can work from anywhere. That

enables creative staffing options like follow-the-sun support approaches or remote deployments.

Sharply Reduces Management Costs From improving staff productivity to slashing multiple management licenses, BSM gives IT a variety of ways

to cut its management costs. After all, when you understand what all your resources are used for, you can

most efficiently leverage, allocate or eliminate them.

Provides a Rapid Return on Investment Novell BSM is proven to quickly deliver tangible results. It’s also important to note that it helps companies

increase their return on other technology investments, such as underlying management tools.

Accelerates ITSM and ITIL Best Practices Adoption Novell BSM can significantly accelerate virtually any ITIL best practice project. By leveraging its powerful

integration capabilities coupled with solutions that automate CMDB and SLM development and deployment,

BSM is a perfect fit for those companies looking to quickly build and deploy configuration management

and/or IT service quality monitoring projects. And with built-in analytics for change reconciliation, drift and

gap analysis, BSM has just the right tools to monitor the effectiveness of your ITIL best practice

deployment—no matter at what stage that may be.

S Y S T E M R E Q U I R E M E N T S For the most up-to-date system requirements for the BSM solution, please visit

www.novell.com/products/business-service-manager/techspecs.html

Copyright (C) 2009 Novell, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Novell, the Novell logo, the N logo and SUSE are registered trademarks and CMDB360, myCMDB, myMO and Business Service Level Manager are trademarks of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. *All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 462-002112-002