DB2 UDB V8 and WebSphere V5. Performance Tuning and Operations Guide2004

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1.1 IBM On Demand era

Welcome to a whole new era—e-business On Demand.

We are entering a new era in business, the On Demand era. An era in which everyone demands that you are more responsive, more flexible, and more resilient than ever before.

It is a new era in business where you demand partners with the vision to foresee where the world is going and the resources to help you make sure that your ideas deliver the results you expect.

1.1.1 The IBM On Demand operating environment

The e-business On Demand is not just a vision. It is the mechanism by which businesses can be more responsive, variable, focused, and resilient to cope with ever-increasing pressures and competition from the global economy.

Overview

On Demand businesses need On Demand operating environments. The On Demand operating environment extends integration of people, processes and information to include the entire value chain. It virtualizes IT resources to improve utilization and align IT expenses with business needs. It is based on open standards and it leverages automated technologies to manage IT resources, allowing you to focus on running your business.

To achieve your business goals, you have to be efficient, integrated, flexible and responsive. For these objectives, new technology is available to help you to:

There are four major attributes of an on demand business:

IBM provides an IT infrastructure for a business to be successful. We call this infrastructure the on demand operating environment. The IBM on demand operating environment is the end-to-end enabling of an IT infrastructure. It is an integrated platform, based on open standards, that can enable rapid deployment and integration of business applications and processes, combined with an environment that allows true virtualization and automation of the infrastructure.

In Figure 1-1 on page 3 we show the three main capabilities of On Demand solution offerings.

Figure 1-1: Overview of an on demand operating environment

What integration is

Integration is a more efficient and flexible way to combine resources to optimize operations across and beyond the enterprise. It provides a single, consolidated view of all available resources in a network—no matter where they reside.

Figure 1-2 shows the key areas of integration that can be used to consolidate the on demand operating environment.

Figure 1-2: On Demand integration

People integration

People integration deals with the process of simplifying the end-user requirements by providing more productive tools and standard interfaces to access applications and data anytime, anyplace.

Process integration

Business requirements change everyday and so do business applications. In order to maintain the consistency among various business applications we need to have common standards and open technologies to integrate the processes.

Information integration

Information lying on different operating environments and architectures needs consolidation for greater performance and availability.

IBM is changing the way we develop and deliver our products to meet on demand capabilities. Integration across people, processes and information provides the real strength to work in the On Demand era.

What automation is

Automation is the capability to reduce the complexity of deployment and monitoring, create a better use of assets, improve availability, and protect an IT infrastructure to meet the business needs with little or no human intervention.

Figure 1-3 on page 7 provides the blueprint given by IBM to assist customers to implement automation capabilities to enhance their businesses.

Figure 1-3: IBM Automation blueprint

The bottom layer of Figure 1-3 shows that IBM has a full portfolio of software and system resources with built-in autonomic capabilities, which provide the most advanced level of infrastructure to implement automation.

The second layer from the bottom shows the key automation capabilities:

The next layer, Infrastructure Based Orchestration, implements coordination across the core automation disciplines: Provisioning, availability, optimization, and open standards.

The top-most layer shows End-to-End Business Service Management tools required to visualize an IT environment in business service terms. It aligns and measures Service Level Agreements by the needs of the lines of business. These tools are required to manage service levels; and connect, monitor, and manage business processes end-to-end for complete linkage of IT and business processes.

What vitualization is

Virtualization is the process of providing an On Demand operating environment where resources can be used efficiently based on the business requirements. Virtualization enables the sharing of resources and it helps to lower the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of an IT infrastructure.

Figure 1-4 shows the four major areas of virtualization.

Figure 1-4: On Demand virtualization

Overall, a virtualized environment provides simplified access to data and IT resources on demand. It reduces the need to purchase additional hardware and software. The savings realized from reduced capital expenditures can be reinvested in other areas to help grow the business.


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