IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager helps IT and business users visualize and assure the health and performance of critical business services. Integrating Tivoli Business Service Manager with IBM Workload Scheduler, enables you to collect and analyze real-time data related to Workload Scheduler objects, in both a distributed and z/OS environment, and through real-time monitoring and analysis of business events, capture the impact on the affected Lines Of Business to improve time to resolution.

Workload Scheduler objects such as jobs, job streams, and agents are extracted to an XML file and imported into Tivoli Business Service Manager. The objects are then mapped to service models or lines of business and event rules are set up in the Workload Scheduler environment to send events to Tivoli Business Service Manager when certain events occur like job status changes, jobs starting or completing, or failed jobs.

Business scenario

An organic cosmetic company sells cosmetics worldwide through an online order and delivery structure. They use a combination of jobs and job streams to manage their business processes, including their product ordering system. There are a number of jobs involved in the ordering process such as, orders, payment transactions, inventory update, reporting and delivery. On the final job in the job stream, an event rule is defined to trigger a message should the job run longer than the expected duration.

So when the delivery order job failed because it exceeded its maximum duration, a message was triggered to Tivoli Business Service Manager. A failure in the execution of the delivery job could possibly compromise the shipment of products to customers. From the Business Services Manager Console, the impact on the business of the job running over its maximum duration can be quickly assessed allowing for a quick resolution without impacting delivery orders to customers.