‘‘Inter-operability is critical for service management’’

Al Zollar, General Manager, Tivoli Software, IBM Software Group, shares his opinions on service management with Faiz Askari.

What’s your advice for a company that wants to take advantage of service management?

It can be defined by many components of the business model, the most significant of which is IT’s role in the business model of an enterprise. A process reference model, visibility of secure content, following best practices, and flexibility and integration are other components. Service excellence and operational efficiency are the other differentiators of how service management should be placed in an organisation.

How does IBM expect to monetise this trend?

The inter-dependence between businesses and IT is growing. Organisations across verticals have started implementing mission-critical applications. Apart from this, organisations are continuously upgrading and updating their IT infrastructure with the advent of newer technologies. These factors are generating the need for service management. IBM however offers a complete portfolio of service management, which includes software and hardware.

How have you taken care of inter-operability? Most organisations have already invested in IT infrastructure, so would they like to introduce any fresh application atop that infrastructure?

The inter-operability factor is really critical for service management solutions. We have taken this seriously, and our portfolio has the capability to automate and integrate complex technologies through service oriented architecture. In this way, an organisation can re-use its existing IT infrastructure more sharply towards delivering the desired business goals.

In terms of numbers, how is IBM’s performance in India?

IBM has been growing at a very fast pace here. IBM India has the second-largest workforce, second only to the US. From 38,500 employees in December 2005, IBM augmented its workforce to 43,000 as of June 2006. In 2005, IBM India operations grew by about 55 percent.

What’s the headcount at the Tivoli Development Centre in India? Which Tivoli product has been developed completely here?

At present we have more than 100 people in our software labs in India. To answer the second part of your question, Tivoli Directory Server—which provides a powerful Lightweight Directory Access Protocol identity infrastructure which is the foundation for deploying comprehensive identity management applications and advanced software architectures like Web services—was developed in India. It is a powerful, security-rich and standards-compliant enterprise directory for corporate intranets and the Internet. The directory server is built to serve as the identity data foundation for rapid development and deployment of your Web applications, and security and identity management initiatives, by including strong management, replication and security features.