Countdown Technologies, Inc.

Countdown Technologies Inc. and Managed Objects have partnered to deliver Business Service Management (BSM) to our clients. The methodology does not take a cookie-cutter approach. After all, there are lots of ways to find value from Business Service Management. We’re focused on delivering what makes the most sense for you - on time and on budget. Step through the different phases of our methodology and see for yourself. Or talk to one of our consultants to see how the methodology relates to your challenges.

What is BSM?
Business Service Management (BSM) helps IT to align itself with the business, as well as to manage its support priorities within a business context. Delivering BSM takes tools that not only indicate the availability and performance of business services like online trading or an SAP environment - but that also pinpoint how technology is impacting those services. According to Gartner (”Business Service Management: Lessons Learned,” July 2003), this approach offers five key benefits:

Visual representation of the dependencies between business processes, business applications and the IT infrastructure (servers, storage, networks, middleware and databases). This gives the IT operations group an understanding of the business impact of a component outage or job slowdown so it can better prioritize operational tasks.
Reduced downtime and shorter problem resolution time because IT support focuses on solving the correct, high priority, business-relevant issues.
Operational efficiency because operators can use a single console for viewing the status of business services as well as for displaying IT infrastructure views.
Business service views can be customized and enabled for viewing by business users, thus giving the line of business a better understanding of how the IT infrastructure is performing.
Greater credibility with the business by demonstrating the IT operations group’s understanding of how it supports business processes and by improving communications.
“While aligning the IT and the business can be a complex process, there are many ways to find significant value in days or weeks. In fact, most of our customers use Formula®, our Business Service Management platform, to address their most pressing challenges, like prioritizing problems, monitoring the end-user experience or consolidating consoles.

Formula - Solutions Overview
We’ve implemented Business Service Management more than anyone. What we’ve found is that our customers typically approach BSM using one or of the following starting points — we call them “BSM Initiatives”:

End-to-End Management - Complete control of the IT infrastructure has always been a daunting, resource-intensive task. This Initiative focuses on consolidating, monitoring, and managing enterprise system management (ESM) data in real-time through a single console.

End-User Performance - Using a stopwatch to understand end-user performance simply doesn’t cut it anymore. This Initiative lets companies manage end-user performance from an end-user’s perspective leveraging BSM to find and fix performance and availability issues before they’re reported by end-users.

Measuring IT Impact on the Business - Understanding how IT impacts bottom-line business is an important issue. This Initiative focuses on integrating IT and business metric information (revenue, inventory, etc.) to understand how IT affects business unit performance.

Service Level Management - SLM allows companies to monitor, measure, and report on IT’s success in meeting its commitments to the business. This Initiative leverages new BSM technology that allows companies to effectively define, monitor in real-time, and actually prevent service level compliance issues before they occur.

Our solutions are built around these compelling Initiatives, bringing together the software, services and methodologies that make sense for each project. Our solutions are driven by real world challenges — take a look at Managed Objects case studies, and see why our experience counts, www.managedobjects.com.

Getting the Most from Business Service Management3™
The Formula for Success Service leverages our extensive expertise in designing and implementing Business Service Views™ across the different management systems that Formula supports, as well as in creating custom solutions that leverage third-party products. This service combines 15 days of consulting and two formal training sessions lasting three days each. Along with expert assistance in deploying and using Formula, key deliverables include an analysis of your current environment, detailed planning of your implementation, construction of different Business Service Views, and training workshops. Key Benefits of Formula for Success With Formula for Success, your company can expect to:

Formula View Builder Service™
Business Service Views™ visualize the relationship between your management data and the business services it’s impacting. They give you one point from which to manage potential issues — as well as the business context you need to prioritize them. That context is the key to giving your customers a superior experience. While many companies recognize this, they may be unsure of how to begin building Business Service Views. That’s why we’ve developed our Formula ViewBuilder Service. It leverages our expertise in building and automating Business Service Views.

Our Approach to Automation
Using a phased approach, we analyze your requirements for Business Service Views. Our methodology identifies targets within your enterprise that are most likely to provide immediate value to you. Maybe it’s an overall view of online trading, or just the process of logging in to your Web site. Next, the team evaluates potential data sources. One reason for this is to identify existing information that would be helpful in transitioning to Business Service Management. Another is to look for ways to automate the process. We also make recommendations on your data collection requirements and constraints. For instance, some companies use naming conventions to delineate their various resources. Formula can leverage these conventions or other consistencies in your environment to automate the construction of Business Service Views.

It’s important to note that the Formula ViewBuilder Service configures your Formula server to support automated construction and maintenance of Business Service Views. We further support your automation efforts by creating processes to extract raw data from defined resources. Staff training on Business Service Views is also included. Subjects range from basic design and maintenance to advanced design techniques.

Important points to remember about the Formula ViewBuilder Service are that it :

Accelerates the application of Formula across your company
Increases the productivity of your operators by automating the construction and maintenance of Business Service Views
Leverages the change management policies your company already has in place
Available for the entire Formula platform, the ViewBuilder Service can be part of an initial implementation or a post-implementation customized offering.