Level: Introductory Georgiann Zaglakas, Reporter, The Rational Edge
15 Aug 2005 from The Rational Edge: This interview examines the rationale for a new product series that integrates tools from IBM Rational and IBM Tivoli. Experts from both brands explain how aligning development, IT operations, and business concerns can contribute to creating a more flexible and responsive environment that enables business growth.  In May 2005, IBM introduced two new toolkits that enable software development teams to automatically identify and repair problems in business applications within production. The offerings, which combine Rational development and testing tools with Tivoli application management software, help development and IT operations teams share application performance data in real time. This improves an organization's ability to isolate problems, identify root causes, and correct those problems quickly and cost effectively.
In this interview, Geoffrey Bessin and Adrian Mitu, marketing and product managers for Rational and Tivoli, respectively, discuss how these new toolkits fit within the larger IBM framework for building an On Demand IT environment. They explain how organizations can use these integrated products to improve their business processes and help achieve successful IT lifecycle management (ITLM) by enabling a more open flow of data between development and IT operations. They also examine specific capabilities and benefits the new toolkits deliver to development and IT operations personnel as they take a significant step in building a nimble and responsive organization.
Georgiann Zaglakas for The Rational Edge: Before we discuss the integrated toolkits that IBM introduced in May, let's look at the thinking behind them. You say they're designed to support IT lifecycle management. What is that, exactly?
Geoffrey Bessin: IT lifecycle management, or ITLM, is the set of approaches IT organizations adopt to integrate and align their software development and IT operations activities with business concerns. To understand ITLM, you have to look at how most of these organizations are structured today. There's a distinct separation between development and IT operations that includes differences in the work these groups perform, as well as their goals, tools, and processes. Until recently, vendors typically directed their attention at one group or another. For example, at IBM the Rational brand focused primarily on creating products for software development teams, while the Tivoli brand produced solutions that address issues within IT operations.
However, IT organizations are realizing that separating the groups in this way inhibits their ability to add value to the business and positively affect the bottom line. They're looking for ways to"break down the walls" between development and IT operations to improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and speed time to market. When I say "break down the walls," I'm not advocating that people stop specializing in development or IT operations -- specialization is important. But the "siloing" that can occur when you have specialization inhibits an organization's ability to align across groups and work toward attaining common business goals.
By joining forces, Rational and Tivoli can help customers adopt a better ITLM approach without sacrificing their specialized strengths in development and IT operations -- or forcing the people within these groups to acquire new skills or learn new tools. Any organization that relies on IT to differentiate itself can use these new toolkits and practices to add value to its company.
Every IT project starts with someone, somewhere, believing that the resulting software will help the business grow. For example, an executive who learns that orders aren't being handled quickly enough might request a new application that speeds up order processing. Unfortunately, such vague requests often lead organizations to spend large amounts of money and development resources on building an application that may not fulfill the various cost, quality, and time promises that IT makes. Successful ITLM helps organizations deliver projects that will really satisfy the goals managers have in mind -- because everyone is working from the same page. These collaborative connections seem so basic and so vital to the health of a company, yet they are missing from most companies today.
GZ: So what is in the two product toolkits that IBM announced in May, and how do they support ITLM?
Adrian Mitu: These toolkits exemplify the type of integration that successful ITLM really demands. They enable developers and testers to use Rational development tools and Tivoli application management software in an integrated way to develop high-quality applications that support business needs. In turn, when you develop high-quality applications, you also reduce the amount of time IT operations staff must spend on addressing application performance.
These toolkits enable development teams to access production data -- right from the IDE they already work with. We know that the more you ask developers to switch tools to perform their jobs, the less productive they become, because each new tool has a different look and feel, different nomenclature, and different paradigms. So this integration effort brings the capabilities of Tivoli tools within a Rational user's familiar environment.
The IBM Problem Resolution Toolkit for Rational Application Developer helps developers identify and resolve application problems by viewing and analyzing production performance data. The IBM Performance Optimization Toolkit for Rational Performance Tester helps testers collect, analyze, and isolate performance data down to the root causes of a performance problem. Both toolkits support these activities via close integration with IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Transaction Performance.
The integration with Tivoli software ensures availability and performance for composite applications running in production. Such applications have a complex series of transaction pathways that cross multiple middleware and run-time environments, including J2EE, legacy, and back-office systems. The toolkits let you identify application performance problems -- right down to the transaction level -- via transaction tracking, root cause analysis, and resource monitoring.
GZ: Can you give us an example of how transaction tracking, root cause analysis, and resource monitoring work?
AM: Transaction tracking enables developers and testers to view the system from an end-user perspective. For example, if you were transferring money within a bank account from a PC, the transaction would follow several steps and have a number of touch points, such as your Web browser, a Web server, an application server, and perhaps a database. The Tivoli composite application management solutions let you literally follow the transaction as it traverses the entire system, measuring the response time throughout the process and the quality of service from the end-user's perspective.
Then, say you discover that the response time is too long. You can perform a deep-dive via the root cause analysis capability. If you identify a problem in the application server, you can use the capability to determine which applications are running, examine the application that applies to the transaction in question to see how it is performing, and examine the offending piece of code as it executes down to the method level.
The resource monitoring capability allows you to determine the overall underlying infrastructure by monitoring basic system resources, such as memory and heap space or CPU utilization.
GZ: That covers the production side of things, but what about the test environment capabilities?
AM: As part of testing, you want to be able to simulate production environment conditions and then stress test the application to see if and when it fails. It's analogous to a doctor testing patients by putting them on a treadmill and measuring their vital signs. With the IBM Performance Optimization Toolkit for Rational Performance Tester, you can use Rational Performance Tester in your test environment to simulate realistic loads on an application or set of applications. Then, you can use Tivoli Monitoring for Transaction Performance to monitor the various transactions and see how they actually perform. If the application fails the tests, you can send it back to development before it is moved into production -- where a failure can have huge consequences.
The new toolkit can also simulate transactions in the production environment to ensure that a system is working properly. You can create virtual users, and then create and track transactions all the way through the system, collect and analyze the performance data, and address any issues you uncover.
GZ: How do these integrated tools support IBM's On Demand strategy?
GB: Our customers are operating in increasingly heterogeneous environments that are undergoing rapid changes. They are also under constant pressure to quickly address market requirements by rapidly developing and deploying applications. From an IT perspective, IBM's On Demand strategy is the way to meet these challenges. It's about using technology to achieve high levels of responsiveness and improve time to market, which enables the business to respond more quickly, efficiently, and cost effectively to customer demands.
Studies show that upwards of 50 percent of production problems are software issues that IT operations can't fix. Unfortunately, the IT operations team is charged with meeting service-level commitments; they didn't build the application, but they're still responsible for ensuring that it's scalable and available enough to support business requirements. On the flip side, when the IT operations team uncovers serious problems in production, the development teams often have a difficult time pinpointing the source because they don't have access to the type of production data reports that IT operations can deliver. The integration these toolkits provide helps people on both sides work together to resolve problems -- and, better yet, avoid them. An environment like that is truly flexible and responsive in terms of technology capability, which is the essence of On Demand.
Eventually, all the IBM Software Group brands will participate in integrated IT lifecycle solutions that will create flexible, responsive technology organizations. Starting with a Rational/Tivoli integration is a natural step because of the close affinity between development and IT operations, and we are working on multiple integration points between those two product portfolios. But IBM's long-term goal is to continue exploring ways to help IT organizations streamline their processes, create agile work environments, and add quantifiable business value.
 Geoffrey Bessin
Geoffrey Bessin is an IBM Rational market manager responsible for a cross-IBM Software Group initiative dedicated to promoting IT lifecycle management best practices. Prior to becoming an Automated Software Quality market manager at IBM, Geoffrey was a Rational Software product manager dedicated to helping customers improve software quality across the entire application lifecycle. He is a frequent speaker and writer, participating in a wide variety of industry conferences around the world.
 Adrian Mitu
Adrian Mitu manages the product management team for Composite Application Management solutions within Tivoli. Previously, he drove the portfolio strategy for WebSphere Application Development tools. He was instrumental in launching Eclipse and the WebSphere Studio Application Developer product and building the WebSphere developer community.
About the author  | | | Georgiann Zaglakas is a freelance writer who specializes in translating complex technical and business information into clear, concise communications materials. During her twenty-year career, she has worked extensively with clients in the high-tech industry, developing internal and external communications. She currently writes whitepapers, articles, testimonials, product and marketing collateral, and Web-based communications. |
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