Aperture, a leading global provider of software for managing the physical infrastructure of datacenters, has launched VISTA Integration Management, which enables applications for IT Service Management (ITSM) to be integrated with the Aperture VISTA suite for Datacenter Service Management (DCSM)Ôäó.
DCSM disciplines ensure that the datacenter is managed holistically using best-practice processes that span the IT and Facilities teams. It extends the principles of ITSM, a framework for managing IT services from a business rather than technical perspective, into the datacenter infrastructure. In many organisations, there are separate groups responsible for managing applications and computing resources, and for managing the physical resources they depend on such as space, power and cooling. Poor communications between the IT and Facilities teams can result in delayed server installations, and uncertainty about the percentage of datacenter resources (such as power) that are available or have already been allocated. Where different management systems are used, information silos can emerge and inconsistencies can hamper effective decision making.
Aperture VISTA Integration Management includes all of Aperture's pre-packaged integration adapters, tools and utilities, and documented methods for integration with IT Service Management applications. VISTA Integration Management is based on Aperture's web portal technology which combines high-performance, data-driven drawing, database, report writing, and power modeling engines with configurable forms, portal configuration tools, and administration functions for global deployment over the web. Web services platforms and standards are used so that interactions can occur with the widest variety of third party systems and tools.
Using Aperture VISTA Integration Management, consistent workflows and processes can be created that span different work groups and the tools they use. Example workflows include equipment installs, moves and decommissions within an overall enterprise change management process. Using Aperture VISTA Integration Management, everything in the work process is auditable and any comments or emails relating to the task are stored with requests. Having a single source of the truth, and a transparent process for handing over work between departments eliminates misunderstandings, makes the IT and Facilities organisations more responsive to the business' needs, and ensures there is sound data to use as the basis for decision making.
Bill Clifford, president, Aperture, said: "When the management of physical resources is disjointed from the rest of IT Service Management, there can be serious productivity problems. An inability to run processes reliably across different teams can result in a delay in provisioning IT services. The lack of a link between physical datacenter resources and applications can make it hard to plan effectively and to perform impact analysis for incidents. Discrepancies in configuration information can make it impossible to make decisions with confidence. With the launch of VISTA Integration Management, Aperture is empowering IT and Facilities managers to have consistent shared processes, incorporating existing IT Service Management tools, but tightly integrating with a dedicated Datacenter Service Management suite for managing the physical layer of the datacenter.