The following 7 requirements for a BSM Service Impact solution are based on the minimal criteria for inclusion in the “EMA Radar For Business Service Management: Service Impact”.
1. Support for service monitoring from a cross-domain perspective
The tool should be able to capture, reconcile and correlate cross-domain interdependencies impacting business service performance. Functionality could include performance management databases looking at performance or time series information; event-management-centric integrations; or self-learning heuristics.
2. Reconciliation of information from multiple sources
The solution should offer capabilities for reconciling information from multiple sources, including multiple brands of management tools.
3. Insight into user experience
The ideal BSM Service Impact product should be able to monitor and assimilate user experience metrics, a key indicator of business impact.
4. Automated linkages between IT service performance and business outcomes
At a minimum, the tool should alert the user to issues regarding SLA commitments and penalties. Other business outcomes can also include business process impacts, direct revenue impacts, and other business activity-related impacts.
5. Capture of application/infrastructure interdependencies
The BSM Service Impact tool should capture some level of interdependencies between IT applications and infrastructure, whether for in-depth configuration or for more real-time application flows, or at minimum for cross-domain diagnostic purposes.
6. Policy-driven automation
The solution should support some level of policy-driven automation for aligning service monitoring with active outcomes in terms of remediation. This would include closed-loop incident management and problem resolution, as well as configuration changes required for automated
Remediation.
7. Support for multiple roles across IT and the business
BSM Service Impact technology should support multiple roles inside and outside of IT, through dashboards and analytics, for critical decision-making and purposes of automation.