Every CIO's dream infrastructure is, perhaps, not far distant from this concept. Here, too, the essential idea is that the infrastructure should automatically deliver the highest return on investment by creating the most business value using the fewest possible resources. Of course, standing in the way of that vision is the reality that most IT infrastructures are enormously complex; they require skilled, continuous human attention to ensure that they operate in a governed fashion. That has been true as long as technology has played a key role in business.

1. Automate Processes: Get Spectacular Business Agility
Automation makes a virtualized infrastructure more efficient and cost-efficient
Every entrepreneur's dream is the autopilot business: Set it up, let it run and with little to
no oversight or hands-on modification, it will continue to generate impressive results
indefinitely.
Every CIO's dream infrastructure is, perhaps, not far distant from this concept. Here, too,
the essential idea is that the infrastructure should automatically deliver the highest return
on investment by creating the most business value using the fewest possible resources.
Of course, standing in the way of that vision is the reality that most IT infrastructures are
enormously complex; they require skilled, continuous human attention to ensure that they
operate in a governed fashion. That has been true as long as technology has played a key
role in business.
Today, however, it is often possible to refocus human attention away from low-level
technical details and toward the fulfillment of business goals. The key enabler?
Automation. Automation, when driven by best-in-class tools, can make the infrastructure
more agile, efficient and cost-efficient by attending to basic, everyday tasks and leaving
human talent free to attend to higher-priority issues.
For these reasons, automation is one of the four central priorities in IBM's modular new
virtualization framework. This framework—based on consolidating resources, managing
workloads, automating processes and optimizing service delivery—is intended to help
organizations develop a custom virtualization strategy tailored to their specific needs.
Each priority is modular; they can theoretically be pursued in any sequence, and some,
depending on circumstances, may not need to be pursued at all.
Organizations looking to get the best results from a virtualized infrastructure, however,
should think very carefully about this module. Automation is not just a great way to
reduce costs, increase consistency and enhance service levels; it's also one of the best
ways to leverage virtualization, and it's well-suited to almost any virtualized
infrastructure.
Automated software provisioning generates many compelling business benefits
One of the most powerful and widely-utilized examples of virtualized automation is
software provisioning. Virtual servers, like traditional servers, require a complete stack of
software—an operating system, applications, data and configuration files, drivers,
middleware and any other essential elements. The faster and more consistently virtual
servers can be provisioned, the faster they can generate business value, and the higher the
ROI they will yield.
Automated tools are unquestionably the best way to handle software provisioning tasks.
Modern provisioning solutions can reduce the time needed to set up virtual servers from

2. days to minutes; they do this by pulling a precreated image of a server's software stack
from a library, then installing it across the network to any target. Every stage in this
process can be automated, typically using scripts or macro functions. Typically, in fact,
the only action required by a team member is initiation of the process—and even that can
be driven by automated, event-driven policies.
And because both the image and the installation process are completely consistent, virtual
servers are not only provisioned far more rapidly, but far more correctly than would be
possible through manual methods. The various configuration errors that a human might
inadvertently commit become a thing of the past—and with them go many unwanted
consequences, ranging from subpar server performance to security breaches to
catastrophic service failure.
Automated provisioning is also an exceptionally versatile technique, one that can yield
tremendous benefits in a wide variety of contexts, ranging from the accelerated creation
of software development testing environments to on-the-fly service creation within a
cloud.
The more advanced the virtual infrastructure—and the more ways virtual servers are
leveraged —the more powerful will automated software provisioning tools become in
fulfilling business goals.
A limitless range of opportunities—and a best-of-breed portfolio to realize them
Automation can deliver comparably impressive enhancements in entirely different
contexts as well.
As workloads change unpredictably, for instance, automated tools can detect and quantify
that change, then take appropriate corrective action to balance the load across platforms,
improving availability and performance. The terms of service level agreements, as
defined by rigorous performance metrics, become easier to fulfill when they are
automatically monitored. Compliance initiatives can be more simply, quickly and
comprehensively achieved through automated discovery and analysis.
Even more impressively, these and other automated functions can be combined to render
better service management in a holistic sense. This is because together, they help create a
layer of abstraction away from technical details and toward what matters: ensuring the
infrastructure optimally fulfills service management goals.
Naturally, IBM offers an outstanding portfolio of solutions and services organizations can
leverage to automate a wide variety of critical functions within a virtualized
infrastructure. Consider:
• Automated software provisioning. The IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager family of
solutions provisions virtual servers with incredible speed and accuracy, thanks to script-
driven automation and simplified management. Different elements of the family target
different provisioning tasks such as operating system deployment and image management

3. at every point in the image lifecycle.
• Automated workload scheduling. The Tivoli Workload Automation suite can fulfill
dynamically-changing workloads in an exceptionally cost-efficient, consistent manner.
Based on business policies, these tools can automatically orchestrate complex sequences
of events—spanning many classes of assets from mainframes to enterprise resource
planning applications to databases—to minimize workload costs without falling below
performance thresholds.
• Automated software licensing compliance. IBM Tivoli License Compliance Manager
automatically determines whether organizations have deployed the appropriate number of
software products based on the number of licenses they actually own—a task well-suited
to rapidly-changing virtual infrastructures, in which servers are frequently created from
scratch.
• Automated cost-tracking. Establishing exactly how a virtual infrastructure generates
costs can be enormously difficult given the way such infrastructures fluidly and rapidly
evolve. IBM Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager solves this problem, delivering
granular tracking of costs at any abstract level from applications to systems to services to
business projects to specific team members or logical groups.
• Automated business service management. How well is the virtual infrastructure hitting
business targets? IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager answers that question by
collecting asset status level information, analyzing performance against predefined goals,
and illustrating the results using key performance indicators—intuitive business service
intelligence that can be absorbed at a glance.
• Automated application environments. Organizations that utilize Java applications must
ensure they perform up to requirement—no matter how their workloads change. IBM
Tivoli WebSphere Virtual Enterprise can automatically detect workload spikes in real
time, and then rapidly balance workloads across different hosts, transparently maintaining
Java application performance in real time for a minimal or unnoticeable business impact.
As an industry thought leader and major contributor to best practices frameworks such as
ITIL and COBIT, IBM is exceptionally well positioned to consult with clients on how
they can best leverage automation within their specific contexts.
Finally, IBM offers many specific services organizations can use to help them automate a
virtualized infrastructure. Among others: planning automation projects of any type or
complexity; leveraging existing assets in new ways; deploying new assets to support new
goals; creating customized, cross-domain tool integration and information sharing; and
optimizing performance.

4. Additional Information:
TPM:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/prov-mgr/
Tivoli Workload Automation:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/scheduler/
Tivoli License Compliance Manager:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/license-mgr/
TUAM:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/usage-accounting/
TBSM:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/bus-srv-mgr/
WebSphere Virtual Enterprise:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/extend/virtualenterprise/
GTS IT strategy and architecture services:
http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/itservice/igs/a1025997
Bullets:
• One of the leading priorities for virtualization: Automating processes in the data center
• Through automation, organizations can dramatically reduce costs, increase agility, and
shift the focus to business goals—not technical details
• Software provisioning is a great example of how automation can drive a virtualized
infrastructure
• Automation can also enhance workload scheduling, regulation compliance, and other
areas
• IBM offers a complete portfolio of solutions and services to help organizations get the
best results from automation
Talking points: see above
Tweet tagline: Automate processes to spur agility and reduce costs! Automation and
virtualization are ham and eggs; IBM has the recipes and ingredients.
Abstract: One of the major priorities in IBM's new virtualization framework is
automating processes. When best-in-class tools automatically perform key everyday
functions—alone or in concert—a virtualized infrastructure becomes more efficient and
cost-efficient, and a business becomes more agile.
Tags/keywords: virtualization, automation, provisioning, agility, agile, data center, IBM,

5. services
Pull Quote:
“Organizations looking to get the best results from a virtualized infrastructure, however,
should think very carefully about this module. Automation is not just a great way to
reduce costs, increase consistency and enhance service levels; it's also one of the best
ways to leverage virtualization, and it's well-suited to almost any virtualized
infrastructure.”