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	TABLE OF CONTENTS Home Movers And Shakers Into Its Own Platform For Change Much More Than Just A Pretty Database Driving The It Transformation?

Even Among IT Pros, a skeptical bunch, NSM practitioners stand out. Years of vendor hype followed by dashed expectations have made us cynical. In this year's NWC Reader Poll, seven of every 10 respondents opined that no one has ever finished a network management platform deployment. That's got to be a slight exaggeration.

2007 SURVIVOR GUIDE INTRODUCTION BUSINESS STRATEGY SECURITY WIRELESS STORAGE & SERVERS MESSAGING & COLLABORATION APPLICATION INFRASTRUCTURE ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS NETWORK MANAGEMENT NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE

Our outlook should improve as significant transformations shake up NSM on both the technology and human fronts. On the tech side, the moves are driven in large part by higher CMDB (configuration management database) usage that will enable cross-domain analytics and integrated and consistent approaches to infrastructure and application discovery. Kiss those siloed, toolset-by-toolset affairs goodbye. It's a matter of survival: If you're not worried about new technologies that demand a more unified, integrated approach to management, most notably SOAs (service-oriented architectures), you're not paying attention.

On a human level, the move toward addressing network, systems and application management as a continuum, supportive of process requirements and best practices, is putting subtle but very real pressure on IT organizational structures. Old ways of doing business--and the work identities of more than a few IT professionals--are under fire.

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The past was about managing discrete systems or devices, using niche tools wielded by closet dwellers with specialized expertise. The future will demand the same, if not more, intelligence, plus significant communication between IT and business colleagues--in plain English, please.

What does that mean for tech pros? Managing individual devices has become more challenging. Networks are denser, more complex and more frequently subject to change. Managing virtualized environments and supporting huge application payloads--some n-tiered, Web-based or otherwise modular--are also raising the pressure level.

All this is driving a trend toward hiring well-rounded professionals whose deep device and engineering expertise is combined with a collaborative mind-set. Working as a "genius in isolation" with an array of scripts and processes that can never be shared won't get the job done. We must work as a team, using standardized methodologies and consistent approaches for uniting IT across domains.

Of course, a unified approach with standardized processes was always a good idea. After all, ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) goes back to the 1980s, and more and more management technologies support these requirements. Although no single NSM tool can provide all the capabilities you need, hundreds of management vendors are trying to design for this collaborative, process-centric market. The enterprise systems-management market is slowly becoming civilized.

1 | 2 Movers And Shakers | 3 Into Its Own | 4 Platform For Change | 5 Much More Than Just A Pretty Database | 6 Driving The It Transformation? Next Page

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