The OMI specification will help the HP OpenView portfolio of software and services monitor the health of a business in addition to the health of technology systems.
By combining a systems management application with the webMethods integration platform via the OMI specification, a company can delve more deeply into its business processes. IT has always been responsible for managing the layers of technology within its own organization, and increasingly, the IT organization is becoming responsible for the success and the future of the entire business. To address this responsibility, the IT focus shifts from managing components of technology to managing the business process from the end-user’s perspective – this is a key component of a company’s service-level management strategy.
Through the use of integration software, customers can include business processes into service-level management agreements with customers, vendors and suppliers. If a process fails to work — for example, the processing of a purchase order is delayed or cancelled — a company can determine if it is due to a system being down or if it is a breakdown in the business process itself. Also, integration allows companies to know which business processes will be affected if any given system or application fails.
The OMI specification will be designed to enable collaboration of systems management software and integration software, allowing for information to be identified and pulled together for business analysis, regardless of where the information is stored throughout an enterprise. The combination of systems management and integration software provides the means to achieve global visibility.
HP and webMethods are addressing a fundamental business problem – the inability to view the health of an entire global organization, said Jim Green, chief technology officer of webMethods Inc. Global Business Visibility provides companies with an effective means to manage and analyze applications that contain important business information needed for business analysis. It will allow companies to finally access the full range of their corporate information.
Companies can create queries about the performance of their systems as well as about the performance of their business, such as how long it takes to process a purchase order or to locate bottlenecks in the sales order process.
The information necessary to answer these questions often spans the multiple applications monitored by a systems management solution, and can be accessed using the OMI specification and the webMethods integration platform.
Integration is a prerequisite for achieving Global Business Visibility. Technology allows for the proliferation of data, and pulling that information together can only be accomplished by connecting the applications and systems in which it resides, said Rick Hayes-Roth, chief technology officer for software, HP. Our collaboration with webMethods will help companies make sure their technology is working properly and is providing them with the information that’s necessary to successfully run a business.
In addition, with HP OpenView’s new Smart Plug-in (SPI), customers can extend their management capabilities to include monitoring and managing the webMethods Enterprise Server. This new SPI is an extension to HP OpenView Operations and will be available in September 2001.
SOURCE: COMPANY PRESS RELEASE
