Tivoli Software always has been one of the most significant performers in IBM’s
wide range of industry solution offerings. In an exclusive interview with ‘InfoSecurity’ Gaurav Agarwal, Country Manager, Tivoli Software, IBM India/South Asia, has unleashed Tivoli’s strength and few innovations, which have empowered Tivoli dramatically.

Gaurav Agarwal, Country Manager, Tivoli Software, IBM India/South Asia

Q1. How big is the market for Tivoli storage and security software in India?

IBM today is one of the leading players in the storage software market in India. Many a times IBM has outperformed its nearest competitors in storage and security software market. Among all the vendors measured by IDC, IBM maintained its leadership position in the storage management software category. Additionally, several reports indicate that IBM has outperformed many leading vendors in Data Protection and Recovery and Storage Infrastructure Software categories.

Besides growth and success, IBM continues to apply innovation to tackle storage challenges caused by ever-increasing amounts of data, constrained IT budgets, data retention requirements and emerging efforts to improve energy efficiency.

Q2. How big is the role of Tivoli software in IBM's "Software for a Greener World" initiative?

In May 2007, IBM launched Project Big Green; committing $1 billion per year to deliver technologies that help customers increase the level of energy efficiency in their data centers. IBM today delivers a variety of hardware, software and services technologies to help customers go green and reap the benefits of increased efficiencies for their businesses while helping to reduce carbon emissions and benefit the environment.

With system management tools such as those from the IBM Tivoli Composite Application Management (ITCAM) family, customers can better understand the performance of their applications, detecting bottlenecks and inefficiencies, which can then be addressed to create a more efficient application. Likewise, IBM Tivoli Monitoring offers a range of system monitoring tools to monitor the efficiency of application components such as databases, application servers and operating systems. With the announcement of IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Green Energy, the Tivoli Monitoring capabilities have been extended to include power consumption and thermal awareness and management for these metrics, enabling a much-needed bridge for the bond between traditional IT awareness and the emerging “green awareness” needs.

As we look at effective deployment of application components, the ability to discover IT resources and their relationships provides an important tool for understanding the physical hosting of application components and their linkages. IBM Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager provides this much valued functionality. Optimizing your business processes for green allows that process to automate manual activities, and make activities that can’t be automated perform in the most efficient manner and location. Through Tivoli Asset Management for IT (TAMIT), employees can see, online, what tasks are awaiting their attention, what process artifacts are currently associated with the process and task, and what additional process artifacts are required to complete the task or activity. Through the use of Tivoli’s Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB), resources and their relationships can be managed, and resources can be provisioned or updated, leveraging a rich change control process.

Q3. Can really Tivoli help a business to achieve green? Can you give us some real time examples?

By managing energy in a smarter, more optimized and more granular way, organizations can reduce these emissions, yet maintain high IT service levels, thus helping to mitigate the looming threat of global warming and to preserve a greener world for us all. To address this challenge, IBM unveiled a sweeping new initiative of services and solutions specifically intended to help organizations monitor, isolate and minimize energy expenses more accurately and easily than ever before. Announced last October 28, the new initiative includes—among many other elements—two which are likely to be of exceptional interest to energy-conscious IT organizations: IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management and IBM Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager.

Together, they form a powerful, customizable solution capable of delivering granular information about where energy costs occur, when, under what circumstances, and involving which technological resources and operational groups. In other words, organizations no longer need to monitor and track IT and facilities energy expenses using different staff and different tools. IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management helps organizations arrive at the total energy monitoring solution they require to reduce both their operational overhead and their carbon emissions.

Q4. Has there any paradigm shift happened in Tivoli security software in last 2 years, which eventually has introduced major change in Tivoli security approach?

IBM Tivoli security software solutions are recognized for their market leadership and trusted worldwide by organizations to help them reduce cost and risk, improve operational efficiencies and allow greater focus on business initiatives and innovation across Identity and Access Management; Data and Information Security; Application Security; Physical and IT Infrastructure Security and Security Compliance.

IBM also unveiled details of IBM Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager, software in the emerging area of encryption key management for storage devices.. IBM Tivoli Security Information and Event Manager, announced recently, allows clients to implement an automated security management solution for both real-time threat management in the data center and policy compliance management via user activity monitoring and log management. The new release of IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business helps automate the management of user and application security with improved usability, scalability and session management along with integration with a wider variety of IBM and other vendors' software.

Q5. A new level of intelligence is demanded by industry from software vendors, which eventually can help them easier management, fast service, faster returns and intelligent monitoring. Can Tivoli offer these?

IBM is offering today its very complete, though discrete, Tivoli management offerings into more understandable and less acronym-centric solution sets, leveraging robust integration, improved price points, deployment models, best practices, and global services capabilities all that target more holistic IT automation. Acknowledging that such automation, or industrialization, remains as the key enabler for enterprise deployments of SOA, Web 2.0, dynamic componentized infrastructures and applications, and cloud computing initiatives, reaffirms the company's direction to tighten IT's link with its business constituents. The stated target is to better automate and respond to dynamic business needs with expanded automation and management capabilities.

IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On automates sign-on and access to your enterprise applications. Eliminate the need to remember and manage user names and passwords with this single sign-on software from Tivoli. Tivoli ESSO enhances security by reducing poor end-user password behavior and reduces the number of password reset calls to your service desk. It also helps you to take advantage of comprehensive session management of kiosk machines to improve security
 Besides enhancing security with a wide choice of strong authentication factors, it provides you centralized audit and reporting capabilities to facilitate compliance with privacy and security regulations. In addition to these, Tivoli ESSO enables end-to-end identity and access management by integrating the centralized identity management functions of IBM Tivoli Identity Manager with enterprise single sign-on, password management software and access automation.

—By: Gaurav Agarwal, Country Manager, Tivoli Software, IBM India/South Asia