I've looked over some others definitions and top 10 lists of BSM principles and still see far too much IT, product, technology and processes, even in these days of IT commoditization. So here is my view of guiding BSM principles after that analysis:

• 1. Understand your business objectives
• 2. Know your market, competition and differentiators
• 3. Communicate service performance
• 4. Know your services and their value classification
• 5. Know your service costs
• 6. Govern in accordance to business objectives and service value
• 7. Provide transparency of services – cost and value based discussions
• 8. Manage services – operate technology
• 9. Operate efficiently
• 10. Be a transformer, not an obstacle, apply technology

Now with these glasses on, look at how you monitor, manage, operate, automate your data center, the processes you utilize and deployment strategies. Service by service based upon the cost and value of the service how will you monitor and measure it? What is the best option for deployment? Based upon business value, how much risk can you take?

All services are not created equal, but we manage them the same in most situations because it is easier to just manage it all the same at the highest cost and the business asks and expects it because they are not presented with options. The challenge is gathering data, turning it into information in a live, integrated view to facilitate these discussions in market time.

What is your view of Business Service Management?

Additional Sources:
Business Service Management Hub
Value and Benefits of Business Service Management
Business Service Management – Finding Your Services

You can read the whole review here, but the Verdict sums it up nicely, “Novell ZENworks is easy to use, integrates well with Active Directory and makes it possible to do an awful lot of management and support without ever leaving your desk.”

ZENworks Configuration Management was released in early January. To learn more and test it for yourself go here.

I’m pleased to announce SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 has been chosen by SAP as the operating system for the SAP® High-Performance Analytic Appliance (SAP HANA). For many years, SAP and Novell have delivered SAP software solutions combined with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server that are optimized to run on industry standard hardware. This combination offers customers the best performance from a validated, turn-key solution at lower cost.

SAP is evolving its in-memory technology with SAP HANA software, a flexible, multipurpose, data source agnostic in-memory appliance that combines SAP software components optimized on hardware provided and delivered by leading SAP hardware partners.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is recommended by SAP as a preferred Linux platform to run SAP applications. In addition to SAP HANA software, it is used by SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator, SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search, and SAP StreamWork Enterprise Agent.

Our proven relationship with SAP, since 1999, has enabled thousands of customers to gain exciting benefits. We help customers lower the costs of their SAP infrastructure when they use SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, the #1 Linux platform for SAP applications.

For more on how Novell and SAP are working together to ensure the delivery of solutions that meet the needs of customers and the market, go here.

• EuroConcept provides information about shopfitting, lighting, architecture
  and store design through to refrigeration equipment
• EuroSales covers purchasing experiences spanning the entire spectrum from
  product presentation to visual merchandising to POS marketing.
• EuroCIS focuses on the latest IT solutions and security technology
• EuroExpo shows innovations in exhibition stand construction, design and
  special events.

More than 1,800 companies from 50 countries will exhibit their solutions at
EuroShop, and over 100,000 visitors from nearly 100 countries are expected to
attend this unique event.

From brick-and-mortars to pure-play web outlets, retailers are turning to
Linux to improve operations, extend customer services and save money. Several
factors have emerged that together are driving broader adoption of the Linux
solutions for retail infrastructure and point of service.

To intelligently meet and exceed in-store computing needs at a low cost, SUSE
Linux Enterprise Point of Service is the only enterprise-class Linux operating
system tailored specifically to the unique needs of the retail industry. SUSE
Linux Enterprise Point of Service provides a reliable, flexible and open
platform for point of service/point of sale terminals, kiosks, self- service
systems and reverse-vending systems. It includes Linux for user touch points
and in-store servers.

But SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service is just one of our Linux-based
offerings from POS to Data Center. Talk to our experts and see how SUSE Linux
Enterprise and Novell solutions can help you solve some of the toughest IT
issues retailers face today. Deploying Linux-based solutions in your entire IT
environment not only cuts your TCO massively, but can also help you
address challenges like flexibility and platform consistency across the
organization, managing PCI compliance and network security, and handling
consolidation and physical constraints in the store and the data center.

If you are an ISV, or a retailer developing your own applications in-house,
visit us to learn more about the easiest solution to build and deploy software
appliances: the SUSE Appliance Toolkit, including SUSE Studio. SUSE Appliance
Toolkit is a collection of tools designed to make applications portable and
cloud-enabled. It delivers the flexibility and control to deploy applications
in physical, virtual and cloud environments in minutes.

Join Novell at the IBM booth A45 (demo point 8) in hall 6 to be inspired,
network and discover new solutions to improve your business, manage costs and
do more with less.

More about EuroShop
http://www.euroshop-tradefair.com/

According to CynergisTek CEO, Michael "Mac" McMillan in a HIMSS Conference session this week, the industry needs a healthcare solution that takes an integrated approach to all logging, monitoring, audit, and review activities that is intelligent enough to deliver a unified view of compliance and smart enough to incorporate privacy monitoring and tie it back to other activity on the network.

So, this week Novell and CynergisTek partnered to offer the Novell Sentinel Healthcare Solution Pack. Now, healthcare providers have the policies and controls needed to lay the foundation for a comprehensive compliance solution to address a broad assortment of regulations.

This is about as close to magic attendees will get next to tonight’s HIMSS-exclusive, Wizarding World of Harry Potter event at Universal’s Islands of Adventure.

Incase you stay up too late and sleep past the end of the show tomorrow, here are all the resources you need to safeguard patient privacy, simplify IT governance and greatly improve safe access to critical resources in your healthcare organization.  (Hint: the information in this post will not only justify that Harry Potter ticket, it will save your company so much money you could buy the secret to every Harry Potter spell, curse, and wizardly jinx. )

SlideShare Presentation –
Information Security and Compliance in Healthcare—Beyond HIPAA and HITECH by Michael "Mac" McMillan, CEO, Cynergistek, Inc.

Press Release –
Novell Announces Industry's First Unified Compliance and Security Monitoring Solution for Healthcare

Novell solution buyer’s guide –
-    Novell Identity Manager 4 Advanced Edition for roles-based user provisioning, advanced workflow capabilities, cloud application connectors and comprehensive reporting on who has access to what.
-    Novell Sentinel for security information event management and log management to govern IT security and overlapping compliance requirements.
-    Novell SecureLogin for single-sign to greatly improve productivity with simplified, safe access to critical resources and applications.

Registration Details

Registration for BrainShare opens May 1, 2011. For more information and to receive updates on this year’s event, please visit the BrainShare website. To further engage with the BrainShare community, please visit the BrainShare Facebook page or LinkedIn.

The majority of the shares of stock voted in favor of the adoption of the merger agreement. This is an important step in the process towards completion of the transaction. You can find out more about the meeting and the stockholder vote by reading our press release.

We’ve been fortunate to work with IBM and our SUSE Appliance Program over the past few years. Using the SUSE Appliance Toolkit and leveraging support from the program, IBM built self-contained, optimized versions of its Smart Analytics System that are ready to go for today’s mid-sized businesses.

Lawrie, a product manager with the Smart Analytics Systems group in IBM’s information management team, explained the company’s vision for software appliances in a case study and accompanying podcast posted yesterday.

“Using SUSE Appliance tools”, he said, “IBM and our business partners we were able to cut deployment time for a software image from a week and a half down to 10 hours for a larger systems and four hours for a smaller system. This enables the company to bring offerings to market quicker and less expensively. IBM has been able to expand the market for its products by bringing an offering to customer without forcing them to invest the time and expense of picking components, testing them and installing them. It shortens the time to value. “

Later in the podcast, Jim also talks about how software appliances have benefited IBM’s channel partners, allowing them to focus on their core competencies while being able to reach out to get new business that deliver results for their customers even quicker.

These compelling results are similar to what we found in some of our own market research and are one reason why the SUSE Appliance Program is continuing its momentum this year, thanks to active, innovative partners like IBM. To learn more, check out the podcast and case study for more details. And for more on how other ISVs are leveraging the SUSE Appliance Program, go here.

Thus, I put my old analyst hat back on and thought as an analyst what would I do? Create a model by which to calculate and start building out a business case. I have put this basic information into a short presentation and have added it to our resource page. The first link is a streaming slide presentation and the second is a self contained PDF file with sound. The PDF file takes a few minutes to download, but you can share the file as you like.

The objective with this slide show was to bring together the statistics from many analyst papers, provide a simple model and understanding of what it costs you to not manage services. We are at a tipping point this year with agile technology, new deployment options and competitive cost models.

This post goes hand in hand with the previous Featured Post on Finding Your Services. Know how to identify and classify your services for service value. The next in that series will be examples of services and the start of a service catalog.

Let me know your thoughts on this! How are you getting to service value and what does it cost you?

Featured Commentary on The Hub! Links to the slide show in the Featured Story on The Hub! http://www.businessservicemanagementhub.com/2011/0…

www.BusinessServiceManagementHub.com @BSMHub

Michele

Last week saw a din of conversation around the recent Comscore report on internet email usage among consumers.  Most coverage has focused on the fact that email use is declining in a big way among young users, and at a reasonable click for all but users 55+. I find these results unsurprising, as they simply highlight the habits we've been living in our personal lives. But what the study left people wanting was data on email trends in the workplace.

A quick look at a slice of recent articles and comments shows that some people can't imagine worklife without email, while other collaboration enthusiasts have long-since made the leap to replace the bulk of email communication with social messaging and other collaboration tools. So what's the reality? One indicator that email is still prevalent for work use is the Comscore study's finding that email use is up for people using mobile devices. (Are people with smart phones more likely to be business users? Probably.)

The past five years have shown that personal communication habits lead enterprise collaboration change. So what are we, in the workplace, waiting for? There are plenty of use cases and studies extolling the benefits of new collaboration tools that email can't touch.  And it's clear that many organizations are using public social media to communicate with listening audiences. But what's holding us back from committing to the next generation of collaboration solutions as we seek to get our work done?

Enterprises are waiting for a compelling "work together" collaboration solution that incorporates social connections in context of work spaces, files, and real-time co-editing tools. Social networking alone won't help us be more productive. And, the right work-together solution has to give IT the security and controls to stand up to audits and compliance requirements.

In case you haven't kept up on this blog, the solution is here! Novell Vibe delivers social collaboration for the enterprise. It incorporates Novell's expertise in collaboration with our market-leading identity and security know-how to give users the work-together tools they want and IT the security it needs. We built Novell Vibe for people in the workplace because it's time for social getworking.