Tech Horizons: OpTier, A Step Toward Business Service Management (BSM) 2.0

BSM is firmly established now as a way to manage IT as a business tool rather than as a collection of fragile technologies. In this transformation of IT into a service provider, technology is only one element of the equation and is no longer the only element. However, the problem of properly managing the technology to achieve the required quality of service is still important, if no longer visible. OpTier's fundamental proposition is to expand on the fundamental concept of managing services from the business perspective by providing visibility into the individual transactions that compose a service. This mapping of services to infrastructure technologies provides IT with the ability to not only understand the service level received by business users but also pinpoint accurately where problems are and communicate with the business, armed with clear and documented facts. This should make IT more efficient by improving the quality of service while reducing costs. As such, we believe that OpTier is a solution that represents the next step in the evolution toward the next generation of BSM tools.