Market Overview: Business Service Management

Enterprises continue to invest in business service management (BSM) projects, even with the economy going into recession. As a technology, BSM is founded on the ability to map business services to infrastructure components, providing visibility into IT from a business standpoint and giving IT the ability to become more efficient and better aligned with the needs of the business. The vendor landscape for BSM has changed dramatically since the last Forrester Wave™ in Q1 2007, and Forrester has re-reviewed the landscape and positioned 20 vendors in 2009. The winning vendor for each BSM deal will have correctly interpreted the chosen enterprise route to BSM, while proving itself capable of monitoring the existing infrastructure resources and providing the desired reporting needs. Vendors should also be aware that only one-third of their effort for BSM is technological as far as the enterprises are concerned: Vendors must also address organizational challenges and establish BSM processes for project success.