Using Business Service Management to Succeed in a Tough Economy

Whether the economy is booming or facing a crunch,business-critical applications can be dealt with
one factor plays a critical role in business: IT. In today'sproactivelyo Departmental heads can start prioritizing
business environment, almost all business activities aretasks according to their importanceo Information can
tied with the IT department. However, most of thebe presented according to the role of the person
departmental heads have no idea of the impact ofconcernedo IT Service Management is easier to put
complex technology on their respective businessinto practice
processes. Many a times, department heads have noBusinesses hence need to consider Business Service
means of identifying and preventing bottlenecks withinManagement as a necessary component in order to
applications so that end users are not affected. Inknow the end to end performance of all their critical
today's tough economy, Business Serviceapplications. However, businesses are sometimes
Management can come to the rescue of many ITforced to choose between two extreme BSM
managers as well as departmental heads to ensure asolutions: one which is inexpensive but lacks
smooth running of business processes.functionality, and another, which is expensive and
The importance of knowing end to end performance isneeds a lot of manpower to support it.
not only applicable for large enterprises, but smallerAn ideal Business Service Management would be one
entities too. In fact, monitoring end to end performancewhich is integrated, affordable and easy to use. A
of applications is more important for small businesses,business should not have to make a compromise in
considering that they function on a very tight margin. Inquality due to the cost of the BSM solution. An ideal
order to stay on top of any performance issue and tosolution would allow end to end performance
effectively solve it, business owners need applicationmonitoring as well as management Service Level
monitoring tools through which they can monitorAgreement. It would also not require any manpower to
whether their business services are functioningmanage it.
properly. Such application monitoring would also informUntil sometime ago, only larger APM vendors used to
them of any bottlenecks in advance and prevent anyoffer BSM solutions; even then, these solutions were
large scale impact on end users. Business Serviceexpensive and complicated. But now, with the
Management enables both the teams to do just that.popularity of Business Service Management, other
Business Service Management solutions help bridgevendors have started offering affordable and easy to
the gap between the departmental heads and the ITuse solutions which can be applied in small businesses
team. When a BSM solution is put to work, theas well.
business department can work in coordination with theThe increased dependency on IT for business critical
IT department to ensure that all the services arefunctions has made Business Service Management as
available and any potential problems may be solvedwell as IT Service Management a must for any
before they start affecting end users. BSM helps inbusiness. Both IT managers and departmental heads
detection of IT issues, tracing their root problem andcan work together to ensure that business services
solving them quickly.are available to end users without a problem.
With Business Service Management,o Issues related to