Today’s complex application environments are requiring organizations to bring in new tools and processes to help manage the diverse set of systems. In less than 25 years, we’ve gone from managing a single system to today’s micro-service application that may run up to 1000 containers at once.

Services and applications are increasingly deployed in environments that take advantage of distributed and, often, virtualized infrastructures. For example, parts of a network might be cloud-based, with other connected elements contained within, or tethered to, legacy systems that exploit tried and tested on-prem capability. The result is often a highly distributed and increasingly complex hybrid network that requires an agile and dynamic operations management solution in order to leverage and exploit rapidly evolving technologies.

These complexities are part of the business reasons that IBM’s Application Service Manager (ASM) exists.

IBM Netcool Agile Service Manager provides real-time views, support and management of highly dynamic infrastructures and services. By visualizing complex network topologies in real-time, updated dynamically or on-demand, and allowing further investigation of events, incidents and performance, operational efficiency is improved, problems are detected and solved faster, false alarms are reduced, and automation and collaboration between operational teams is improved. Also, data can be leveraged more efficiently, both in real-time and historically, thereby empowering teams and systems to create and nurture differentiated services for different customers.

ASM benefits include:

  • Graph-based Topology Service with easy-to-use REST APIs to store and retrieve data
  • DASH-based UI that provides up-to-date visibility on cross-domain topological data
  • Ability to maintain topological history to align with other management archives, for example, events
  • Ability to give accurate and up-to-date context to infrastructure and services related to events and incidents
  • Well documented and open REST APIs

ASM has a number of data services called Observers to ingest event, topology and status information.

  • Cassandra
  • Ngnix
  • Omnibus
  • IBM Network Manager
  • IBM Life Cycle Manager
  • OpenStack
  • File
  • Docker
  • IBM Application Decennary Discovery Manager
  • IBM Cloud
  • VMWare
  • VMVCenter
  • Rest
  • Kuberbetes
  • DNS
  • Kafka
  • Other Topology services
  • ZooKeeper
  • Elasticsearch

ASM is a simple addon once the above Observers are deployed from the Event Console within NOI.

Sirius has a strong partnership with IBM that has been built over many years, knowledge and experience. We can help get you set up with ASM and other solutions to benefit your business. Contact us to get started.