Slightly Skeptical View on Tivoli

(Including Integration with Open Source Tools and Scripting Languages)

Tivoli is a powerful and very scalable (up to several thousand nodes) closed source product that is complex to install and very expensive to maintain. In the current economic environment high maintenance costs became a big problem . Add IBM sale force often tries to force you to pay extra by pushing unnecessary components at the stage you do not fully understand what you need and what you don't.

"Classic" Tivoli components (such as TMF and TEC) depends on CORBA and will be phased out in 2012 in favor of Netcool (see below). This is a huge change, essentially a switch of the product line, and it drives many organization into search of alternatives.

Historically Tivoli was one of first successful product for enterprise system management (ESM) and along with HP Operations Manager (another product from early 90th) its systems and event management capabilities in many respects defined the field. In 1996 those two products were far ahead in understanding ESM problems. This is not the case now as competitors closed the gap (actually in this respect HP Operations Manager fared better then Tivoli). Please note that Gartner also uses acronym ESM for Enterprise Security Manager -- related but different type of applications.

Tivoli is not an original IBM product. IBM bought Tivoli (the product and the company) in 1996 from the company called Tivoli Systems for $743m USD stock swap and retained the name of the product. Tivoli Systems   is the original designer of the product and was founded in 1989 by four former IBM employees. It was located at Austin, Texas. The key person was Bob Fabbio who was the supervisor for the team that was to develop the new system management architecture for the IBM AIX Operating system at IBM, Peter Valdes (died in 2008) who was a Software Architect for the IBM AIX Development Labs in Austin, Texas and reported to Bob Fabbio. Two other IBM employees involved were  Todd Smith and Steve Marcie (the_tree_of_tivoli).

The word Tivoli reminds the name of European carnivals. “We called it Tivoli because Tivoli means a ‘fun place’. We wanted to have fun and freedom in this new startup,” recalls Valdes. The group was already tired of IBM’s stiffed, bureaucratic environment. That is probably why when Tivoli was eventually re-acquired by IBM, the all founders eventually left.

At the beginning of Tivoli Systems startup life Fabbio secured a one year consulting project with Kodak in Rochester, New York. This consulting deal was enough to pay their salaries for a year. Initial startup operated out of single room in Austin and was staffed by just four people.

The original Tivoli team used Solaris as the development platform and up to this date Solaris is preferable platform for "classic" Tivoli components. Later they got three million dollars from Kleiner Perkins (in tandem with Austin Ventures and Boston Ventures). There was additional two rounds of financing and after the third round of funding, the venture capital firms had infused a total of $30 million dollars into Tivoli Systems.

Normally it takes four to six years to create a substantial software product and organically establish its set of initial customers (often called reference sites in startup lingo). Such a business grow very slowly. This is the case with Tivoli Systems too: their first customer was not a prestigious high tech company, but an airline catering company. Al always, there’s a little luck involved. Tivoli was lucky to be founded at the beginning of the internet boom. Perfect timing ensured its survival and subsequent prosperity. Frank Moss former Tivoli CEO, recalled that:

Tivoli grew so quickly because the nation was rebounding from an economic recession and Austin was gaining a reputation as an up-and-coming city. Those factors enabled Tivoli to recruit quality workers from Boston and Silicon Valley. Those workers got a firsthand look at what can happen when hard work is combined with innovative thinking. They acquired a lot of experience with the run we had.

In 1995 company has staff of approximately 300 people and revenue of approximately $50 millions. In the same 1995 Tivoli Systems had its IPO on the NASDAQ with an initial price of eleven dollars per share (Tivoli Systems Inc. initial public offering.)

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 24, 1995--Tivoli Systems Inc. announced Tuesday the filing of a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to a proposed initial public offering of 2,325,000 shares of common stock.

Of the total shares offered, 2 million shares are being sold by the company and 325,000 shares are being sold by selling stockholders.

The offering will be lead managed by Goldman, Sachs & Co. and co-managed by Robertson, Stephens & Co., L.P. The offering is expected to occur in mid March. The estimated initial public offering price, according to the preliminary prospectus, is currently expected to be between $9 and $11 per share.

Tivoli is a leading supplier of systems management software and services for the client/server computing market. The company's object-oriented solution, the Tivoli Management Environment (TME), provides a comprehensive set of systems management applications that reduce the cost and mask the complexity of managing widely dispersed UNIX and PC clients and servers.

The TME provides key client/server systems management applications addressing both deployment and operations functions such as software distribution, client and server configuration management and event monitoring and correlation.

A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but has not yet become effective.

Note to Editors: Tivoli Management Environment is a trademark of Tivoli Systems Inc.

CONTACT: Tivoli Systems Inc., Austin

At the end of the trading day, the Tivoli Systems stock closed at sixteen dollars per share. A year after Tivoli Systems listed on the NASDAQ, its price per share was trading in the $30 to $36 per share range.

In 1996, Lou Gerstner, who was one of first "financial sharks" who start descending as CEO of technical companies (and destroying them in their relentless drive for higher share prices and personal bonuses) launched an acquisition spree to beef up IBM's software product offerings. One of the first victims was Lotus. Tivoli was the next one. In his memoir entitled “Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance” (HarperCollins, 2002), Gerstner mentioned that

“Tivoli was a $50 million dollar company when we bought it. Its revenues, augmented by some existing businesses from IBM, are now in excess of $1 billion.”

Initial reaction to acquisition was mixed: Systems management enters new phase - IBM acquires Tivoli Systems

The systems management world was shaken recently when IBM launched its $743 million offer for Tivoli Systems Inc., Austin, Texas. In the weeks that have followed, observers have watched closely for signs of things to come, as the headquarters for IBM's systems management operation shifts to Austin.

One school of thought holds that IBM's purchase of Tivoli will not be of the "hands-off" character that marked its purchase of Lotus. "IBM has said this will be a hands-off deal as with Lotus, but Tivoli's is very much a different type of product than Lotus'," said Paul Strauss, senior analyst, networks and system management, Sentry Market Research (SMR), Westborough, Mass. Are Tivoli customers now IBM captives? "The answer is clearly 'Yes,'" stated Strauss.

Some disagree. "IBM will do as it did with Lotus," said Sam Albert, president, Sam Albert Associates, Scarsdale, N.Y.

He points out that IBM has placed Tivoli boss Frank Moss in charge of the entire IBM systems management program. Still, Tivoli's neutrality -- it has been described as the "Switzerland" of systems management -- is widely in question.

Moss confirmed that Tivoli will still exist as an independent firm, 'a la Lotus. No preference will be given to IBM platforms, he asserted in a memo. "The early maneuvering in the distributed systems management market is over," he said.

"As an independent company, we've made progress," said Moss. "This [merger] is a strategic move designed to propel Tivoli forward. Our market is about to exhibit its expansion stage."

Still most observers agreed that the game is worth candles (IBM gathers Moss & Co - IBM acquires Tivoli Systems Inc; Tivoli head Frank Moss will lead IBM's systems management product line):

In another move that highlights the importance placed on software by IBM in the Lou Gerstner years, IBM entered into a definitive merger agreement with Tivoli Systems Inc., Austin, Texas.

IBM will commence a cash offer for Tivoli's shares. The deal is valued in the lofty neighborhood of $743 million.

Tivoli head Frank Moss, formerly of IBM and Lotus, will head IBM's entire systems management product line. This move comes as IBM continues to roll out--and rationalize--portions of a systems management line that must encompass IBM's platforms from PCs to mainframes, as well as competitive systems from Digital, Hewlett-Packard and SunSoft.

Start-up Tivoli came to prominence in the wake of the demise of the Distributed Management Environment (DME) promulgated by the Open Software Foundation, Cambridge, Mass. With DME on the rocks, the Tivoli Management Environment (TME) became the closest thing to an "open" systems management framework. Did IBM pay too dearly for Tivoli?

"Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,U said Sam Albert, president, Sam Albert Associates, Scarsdale, N.Y. "If IBM becomes the systems management leader as a result of this deal, it was worth it."

Company for several years functioned an independent subsidiary before it was integrated into the IBM software division. After Tivoli acquisition several key developers abandoned the ship and formed the company called IT Masters. They produced a competing product called MasterCell which at peak (2003) has had 80 employees. It was a kind of "better Tivoli then Tivoli" type of product in a sense that they tried to resolve some original architecture flaws.

The company and the product were acquired by BMC Software in March 2003 soon after release of MasterCell 3.0 (since then it was renamed BMC Event Manager). Before that in late 2002 BMC managed to buy helpdesk company Remedy, which was the top helpdesk application as for integration with Tivoli. That was a very shrewd move and actually left Tivoli to hang dry without a clear cut path for helpdesk integration. So it's not surprising that the product sucks in this dimension. Any ESM tool is not complete unless the helpdesk product is tied in, so that serious problems can be are recorded as tickets and there is a formal recoded flow of actions when they are managed, diagnosed and prioritized.

Tivoli Systems eventually generated more than $3 billion in revenues for IBM, and in five years (in 2000) reached 1,000 people in Austin and 3,000 worldwide. Part of the growth was due to acquisitions, In September 1997 it acquired Unison Software (UNSN) for $170 million in stock and converted it into highly successful (and the most expensive) product in Tivoli line, product which along with steep initial price generated tremendous maintenance fees (Tivoli Systems acquires Unison). Unison had 225 employees and approximately 40 millions in sales at the time of acquisition. That's essentially doubled the size of Tivoli workforce.

The first ten years after the initial Tivoli acquisition IBM made a reasonably good effort to market the product and managed dramatically increase the industry penetration. For example, in 2000 they managed to land lucrative contract with Air Force (Air Force Awards Tivoli Systems Desktop Management Contract Through Logicon's I-CASE Program; 18-Month Deployment to 17 Air Force Bases Underway):

Tivoli(R) Systems Inc. has partnered with Logicon Inc., a Northrop Grumman Corporation company, to deliver a desktop management solution for the U.S. Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) i a major command of the United States Air Force.  The award, made by the Air Force Standard Systems Group, includes software, maintenance, training and comprehensive implementation services.

When implementation is complete in about 18 months, Tivoli Enterprise(TM) will be used to manage more than 120,000 desktops across 17 U.S. Air Force bases in the Materiel Command. The desktop management functions will allow each base to automatically inventory all hardware and software in the network-connected desktops. In addition, the system can download software and perform updates on existing software throughout the base network.

That somewhat compensates their passivity in technological development area (product architecture stagnated) as with substantial market presence it is easier to redesign product to meet the new challenges. After all abandonment of product due to inability to market it is the most grave flaw for a commercial software development company. Tivoli market share started to slip after 2000 and attempts to compensate for this by increasing maintenance costs backfired. Starting from 2005 open source tools like Nagios squeezed Tivoli from below while HP and BMC squeezed it from above. As of 2009 Microsoft System Center Operations manager has the largest installed base followed by HP Operations Manager. Tivoli became "also run" in ESM world.

Still it's sad that a redesign never happened: even today surviving products from the original Tivoli line products still have look & feel like they came straight from 1996 and still based on by-and-large irrelevant now CORBA. Tivoli administrative interface is still a rather primitive X-based application.

Instead of developing and refining the product around 2004 IBM engaged in the acquisition binge and essentially bought out two competitors, rebranded them and tried to phase out old products. Judging from the fact that during this period IBM acquired Internet Security Systems (ISS), architectural vision that was characteristic of "old IBM" completely disappeared. The company became managed by bean counters instead of engineers, the transition that happened under Gerstner and became a real storm under Palmisano. Simultaneously IBM became very active in outsourcing and drastically cut the US workforce. It's really funny that Palmisano with his bachelor degree in history can't see the danger of such approach. First cracks in this newly build "services + outsourcing" foundation appeared in 2010 when IBM services revenue started to stagnate (BusinessWeek ).

HP Operations Manager and BMC Software offerings might serve as the base of comparison both in price/performance issues as well as in quality of architectural solutions. For example, HP Operations Manager 9.0 beats old Tivoli in all major aspects starting from cleaner architecture, ease of use and including acquisition and maintenance costs. As TEC will be discontinued in 2012 search for Tivoli alternatives makes perfect sense. See Tivoli Alternatives for more details.

In case complex rulesets were developed in TEC, BMC might provide better upgrade path then "new Tivoli" as product was based on IT Masters, which was "enhanced" Prolog-based correlation engine developed by the same team that developed classic TEC. Actually Prolog interpreter used in Tivoli TEC in now owned by BMC ;-). HP Operations Manager looks like cleaner, more modern implementation of Tivoli monitoring that is very competitive with Candle. It has a separate correlation engine (OMi Topology Based Event Correlation ), but I have no experience with it.

All-in-all IBM's strategy of development Tivoli is typical for a large, stagnant corporation, the class IBM represents extremely well, and as such there is not much interesting in it. For all those 10 years since acquisition they did some useful polish but mainly tried to extend Tivoli line by increasing the number of products branded as Tivoli. Some of those products were developed internally but several were bought to broaden the appeal of the brand (as well as to eliminate competition). IBM actually did surprisingly little in the area of updating existing applications and making them more modern and more flexible despite having several products that provide significant synergy with Tivoli and other lines of products and first of all Lotus Notes.

While from the point of view of technology used internally (Prolog, CORBA, etc) Tivoli has lost its luster in the enterprise management market due to "age-related hardening of the arteries" (or sclerosis ;-), it still commands a the third biggest share of ESM market. After IBM bought several of competitors the situation became even worse. The first sign of this "new wave" was the release of ITM 6.1 in 2006. ITM 6.1 duplicated 80% of capabilities of TFM+TEC+ITM. And this is not surprising as OMEGAMON was a pretty capable competitor of Tivoli in large enterprise space. Subsequent acquisition of Netcool further complicated the picture as Netcool provided supposedly (much depends of the quality of pre-filtering on the gateway in TEC) more scalable correlation engine and now IBM decided to abandon old Prolog-based approach to event correlation used in TEC and which became trademark of Tivoli.

Actually "improvement by transplanting" somebody's else solutions into existing complex system was the typical way IBM addresses Tivoli problems. It is very challenging way to improve the system without weakening or even completely destroying the conceptual integrity of the product.

History of IBM software development suggests that architects are usually unable to withstand management and marketing pressure. Current Tivoli product stack looks like a Christmas tree with many marginal or overlapping products. It looks like IBM brass has no sense of measure and tried to overextend the brand they created.

Usefulness of Tivoli dramatically drop beyond small set of core products and return on investment suffers if an organization buys too many "second tier" junk. It makes sense to concentrate on a few key products to cut both the complexity and the price and supplement them whenever possible with scripting-based solutions.

In it current incarnation Tivoli consists of large (over a hundred) number of component with only few deserving mentioning.

The super-minimal set of products can consist just of ITM 6.1, but in this case you lose programmable correlation engine. The minimal set of products that can be used in more or less "open source" way includes TEC and probably consist of just half dozen names. The most important (and often carefully hidden) fact is that in ESM 20% of the functionality provides 80% of the value.

The very sad fact about Tivoli, especially modern version of products (actually rebranded product from acquired competitors) is lack of understanding of scripting and compete absence of a conscious effort to integrate scripting into the products (with one minor exception ITM 5.1 which now is replaced with ITM 6.1; the former used JavaScript scripting engine on all endpoints). IBM brass never managed to understand importance of scripting and instead put all eggs in Java basket. Paradoxically "Old line" of Tivoli products was more scripting friendly. To quote Talleyrand "This is worse then a crime this is a blunder."

Due to the level of frustration with lack of integration of scripting into Tivoli line the most advanced part of Tivoli users are open for grabs and this can represent an opening both for HP and BMC as well as for open source competitors.

The latter achieved significant progress on the system monitoring side of the house where open source products achieved a certain level of maturity. And contrary to IBM propaganda they can do most of the tasks better and cheaper. What is currently lacking is a programmable correlation engine and GUI capabilities but this can be compensated by using commercial product only as the alert integrator for open source products, licensing it with minimal number of nodes.

Tivoli adoption is not cheap in any case as it does require a dedicated person or several persons in the organization. As the product line was formed as a result of multiple acquisitions, loose integration, multiple agents, different user experience, redundant processes and multiple client agents make Tivoli difficult and expensive to administer. In the past that was partially compensated by excellent IBM support, but now with outsourcing hitting the US-based IBM staff  hard the quality of support is also in decline.

But if you minimize the set of Tivoli products deployed, you can pay a fraction of software costs getting 80% of benefits. Please note that IBM traditionally use three/four letter abbreviations for all products (which is a very good practice that has roots in mainframe world, but for some reason it did not spread outside IBM software products universe; it helps to provides meaningful prefixes to error messages and as such is much better then syslog fixed "subsystem" approach).

The minimum set of Tivoli products that make sense in the large enterprise environment includes but is not limited to:

1. TEC -- Tivoli Enterprise Console. This was the key component of "classic" Tivoli which will be abandoned by IBM in 2012 and replaced with Netcool. But it is stable and if you license it can be used without tech support and with just a single endpoint on the server, getting all alerts from third party products via logadapters. You can also use stateless correlation on gateway getting two stage correlation.

   While formally this is an add-on product which provides GUI interface for viewing the events stream (client side of TEC), correlation engine (server side of TEC) and several adapters (including log adapters) it is actually a part of Tivoli Management framework (TMF, see a short description below) as TMF is pretty much useless without it. TEC shows its age and the product definitely can benefit from better event console interface GUI: the current one does not even have an animated icons and other typical for competition interface enhancements. Still  functionality is OK and Prolog based approach to correlation has its strong points.

   The most interesting feature of TEC is the fact that it has been build using Prolog engine, so actually this is a programmable in Prolog expert system. "Programmable" for complex products usually means that it is better product then open source but non-programmable ;-). IBM never implemented good extensions to the Prolog interpreter and that probably doomed the product. But the idea of using some kind of extended regular expressions for correlation is sound and might still be revived as SQL-based approach while good to filtering becomes much less intuitive for complex cases such as time dependencies and topology based correlation. Prolog can incorporate topology using fact bases.

   In TEC any event can be changed/dropped/correlated in the most complex way imaginable. Capabilities are limited only by your skills in Prolog. For example in case you get events from logadapter you can substitute the host value supplied the system (the host of logadapter) to the host of the actual host were the event occurred and thus imitate presence of endpoints. Still Prolog is a very unorthodox language and is quite challenging to master. And that means that while capabilities are present, it's not that it is actually used that way (most custom Tivoli rulebases that I personally have seen were very primitive indeed). But we should agree that for 1996 the Tivoli authors demonstrated pretty impressive level of thinking as the problem of correlation is one of the few that can benefit from recursive parsing with backtracking, the approach that Prolog exemplifies.

   Due to Prolog usage there are some problems with scalability, but generally scalability is quote adequate. Only in cases of very primitive TEC set-up (for example no pre-filtering of events on gateways) or huge installations scalability can be a problem. For good scalability architecture of both Tivoli itself and the architecture of the rulebase should be carefully thought out: order of rulesets should be optimized for the frequency of incoming events and gateways pre-filtering of events should be correctly configured. If gateway pre-filtering and rule set optimizations are used intelligently, scalability can well be better or at least competitive with the Netcool engine. It is interesting to note that Netcool used to has extremely restrictive (draconian) licensing policy.

   Anyway Prolog proved to be too complex correlation engine for a typical enterprise environment and too far from a typical Unix administrator skill set. Integration with Perl attempted by IBM which could solve this problem was very superficial and half-baked. It looks like IBM never believed in the product (and the content of two classes that teach rule programming indirectly confirm that -- looks like the authors has problems understanding Prolog themselves). Due to this advanced Prolog capabilities were seldom used. In this sense it was a failure. BMC still markets another descendant of the same Prolog-based correlation engine. Organizations with large investment in custom Prolog rules can move to this product with minimal hassle.
   

2. ITM -- Tivoli Advanced Monitoring. Exists in two versions 5.1 and 6.1 which are actually two completely different products sharing little but the name:
   
   • Version 5.1 is an innovative but rather problematic product due to Java as an implementation language on endpoints. Unlike version 6.1 it is a "real" Tivoli component that uses framework for its functionality. But historically the most of life that product suffered from the low quality of the codebase. Also there is nothing advanced in "out of the box" functionality provided. Actually, capabilities provided out of the box looks like a cheap shareware, not like an enterprise product. But still the word "advanced" in the name makes sense: the solution was really elegant: it uses JavaScript as an extension language (via Rhino open source implementation of JavaScript in Java). While this is definitely the bright spot of the product, Perl both traditionally and in Tivoli context is the most popular scripting language for writing various audit/checking modules in Unix, so in a way this was wrong approach to the right problem. Discontinued due to Omegamon acquisition
     
   • Version 6.1 is the rebranded Omegamon from IBM Candle acquisition. Only "Express edition" announced in March 2006 has a good price/performance ration (see Deployment Guide Series IBM Tivoli Monitoring Express V6)

     It has no relation to Tivoli other then being a successful competitor, especially in mainframe space, which in the past was the most lucrative segment of the market. It is a heavyweight, completely closed product but "out of the box" functionality is much richer (especially on Windows side) and GUI interface is superior. Another important advantage of the new version is that stream of alerts can be split and send to two or more separate servers. While GUI interface is Java-based, agents are not. All-in-all Tivoli 6.1 is a completely new, different product that shares with Tivoli framework and TEC only the name. Interface to scripts is ugly as hell and smell mainframe from a hundred feet.

     ITM 6.1 implements a SOAP-based client/server architecture. The client sends SOAP requests to the SOAP server. The server receives and processes the SOAP requests from the client. While overly complex and not very reliable, theoretically SOAP works with any programming or scripting language.

     GUI is really nice taking into account that it was written in Java but mainly used on Windows: it is one of the best Java-based GUI front-ends I ever saw. The product has much better "out-of-box" functionality (very impressive on Windows and mainframes, less so but still better then ITM 5.1 on Unix).

     Unlike Express edition full ITM 6.1 a very heavyweight product that consists of several components that in the past required to be installed on separate servers.

     Note: Express edition was discontinued because it interfered with IBM licensing of full product.

This minimal set is probably enough to provide 80% of functionality and, if necessary, can be gradually extended in house. The most promising extension path is to replace endpoints with open source tools and integrate events stream using TEC logadapters. In this case you do not need to buy endpoint licenses for all your servers: may be only critical one that justify additional expense or are forced by IBM due to minimum licensing requirements. Less critical (or all) can be served with open source tools like mon or Nagios and alerts can be converted and correlated in TEC or IBM 6.1. In this case the value of Tivoli is connected with the value of its powerful correlation engines (either Prolog-based from TEC or Omegamon as there is no open source alternative for this functionality). Also in case of TEC the set of concepts and documentation has its own value as intellectual property acquisition which can help to prevent you from doing many stupid architectural errors and reinventing the bicycle.

There are also several Tivoli components that are problematic and cannot be recommended:

• TMF -- Tivoli Management framework. This was the key component of "classic" Tivoli which will be discarded in 2012. In its simplest form Tivoli Framework consists of central server (TMR) and endpoints (more complex deployments can involve a network of TMRs that can communicate with each other in hierarchical or peer-to-peer fashion). The protocol is somewhat similar in functional capabilities to what was provided by rsh, rcp and like (and later SSH) and allows execution of remote commands. The client part is implemented via agent. TMF also contains a simplistic scheduler and the ability to run jobs on endpoints although those days this functionality is deemphasized as IBM markets more powerful (and very expensive) TWS (see below). To make environment more uniform outside Unix, TMF come with prepackaged Perl 4 and bash shell and during installation of endpoints both are installed automatically. Some prepackaged scripts are written in Perl.

  For any server or workstation with endpoint, the administrator can rely on the presence of those two pretty powerful scripting components. Perl is now preinstalled on most flavors of commercial UNIX so the value of this solution for Unix is now close to zero but still there are cases when even in UNIX world that makes a difference. The beauty of Perl 4 is it is a single executable (like AWK), so you do not depend on libraries, modules and other Perl 5 paraphernalia. While ActivePerl is commonplace on Windows, the availability of Perl is still a nice feature for Windows to have (unless you have Cygwin or SFU 3.5 installed; you better should ;-). I do not know about handhelds.

  Generally framework with its multitude of "w" commands is like a "Lego" constructor and you have considerable freedom of creating your own applications based on it. IBM provides many prepackaged applications but if you have your own ideas on how a particular component should work you can create your ESM framework using Perl as your glue. Of course, the more complex application you want to build the more glue you need to link those building blocks together. But this way you can create the most flexible and customizable infrastructure (IBM usually does not supply source code with prepackaged components; a lot of them are written in Java and are ugly as hell).

  TMF framework interface is a classic example of an interface used in products developed around 1996 and now looks more like a historical curiosity that a viable solution. As the initial development of Tivoli was done in mid 90th many architectural decisions which were innovative at the time (my impression is that CORBA was actually pioneered by Tivoli team) now outlived its usefulness.

• TWS - Tivoli Workload Scheduler. This is a hugely overpriced third party (bought by IBM) enterprise scheduler that somewhat reminds me mainframes job schedulers; it is used in many large corporations, although there is nothing in it that you cannot do with simpler tools (like the original TFM scheduler). It does not have Unix origin and it shows. It's better to avoid this component as its functionality can be replicated with much cheaper and more UInix-friendly analogs. Schedulers are now commodities software and dozen of more companies have their ware ready to sell at much better price/performance ratio then IBM.

  IBM did a very poor job integrating it with Tivoli: it requires separate endpoint agent and has completely different from Tivoli architecture and ideology.

  The idea is to provide the ability to run scripts on any computer that have endpoint installed and control the execution. Integration with TEC is rather superficial and is based on logadapter. This is a very expensive product. A large part of functionality can be duplicated with TFM and TEC. Other products can be integrated with TEC using the same logadapter mechanism.
  

• TCM -- Tivoli Configuration Manager. Newer version does not need Tivoli framework. It has dual personality: inventory management and software delivery/synchronization. 'Dual functionality" -- inventory and delivery/synchronization is a questionable approach -- it is not good in iether, but still it is a decent product. It uses its own package format which probably should be replaced by RPM format.

  In view of existence of ssh the value of delivery in the local network is questionable. Still might make sense for WAN. Contains some advanced technology for propagating packages to multiple machines developed in Japan by IBM and NTT (UDP multicasting).

  Might also be used for collecting local reports into central location. Those days many of the tasks that can be performed using TCM can be performed with ssh and scripting, but the product has some WAN edge. All-in-all you can find better solutions for the same amount of money or less.
  

• SCM -- Security Compliance Manager. This is a good idea, but a very problematic implementation. First of all it is "too closed to be useful" product with a number of rather inflexible, primitive closed source checking modules written in Java. IBM provides the ability to extend the product in Java, but the level of componentization is rather weak and that presuppose that you can learn the API provided by the product (which is horrendously over-engineered).
  
• Tivoli Risk Manager -- another good idea that was horribly implemented. This is a specialized Java-based product that competes with TEC. Everything the Tivoli Risk manager does can be implemented using TEC or Tivoli monitoring, probably with additional benefits of uniformity. So benefits of having "yet another incompatible with others Tivoli component" is unclear. Product implements graphic console similar to ITM 6.1 console which now does not make much sense.
• Tivoli's NetView. This is now abandoned IBM product. The most interesting [art about it is that it a port of OpenView's Network Node Manager 3.x. HP did the port to AIX for IBM, but IBM chose do not take any further updates from HP, so the code base for NetView was frozen of the level of HP's NNM version 3. To run NetView you type in "ovw" just like in OpenView. Tivoli bought Micromuse and Micromuse Precision eventually became ITNM IP (IBM Tivoli Network Manager - since every member of Tivoli product line should have an acronym :-). ITNM can capabilities for root cause analysis.

An interesting part of classic tivoli is that there is an additional Java-based gateway correlation engine - so called Zurich Correlation Engine (ZCE). In classic Tivoli implementations the usage of the latter is usually limited to gateways.

The Zurich Correlation Engine (ZCE) is a compact, Java-based, fast, real-time correlation engine. It supports a wide range of correlation requirements with maximum performance. Its unique "rule replication" function allows a single rule to automatically handle multiple instances of the same event signature. Its compact size makes it possible to deploy multiple, distributed correlation engines in an enterprise, allowing scalable correlation. As implemented in Tivoli Risk Manager, it correlates security information and risk alerts from firewalls, routers, networks, host- and application-based detection systems, desktops and vulnerability scanning tools.

As many other current products on the market Tivoli definitely is suffering from over-complexity (sometimes this fact is recognized in evaluations but mostly is not. For example of the former see old NASA Tivoli Impact Assessment Report [PDF]). This overcomplexity problem is rampant and while it is typical for IBM products in no way it is limited to one company. Still IBM is very consistent in over-engineering its products and Webshere can serve as another example of this approach.

I think that while we often cannot fight overcomplexity of the products we can still be at least very selective in what we adopt: the key to success in Tivoli deployments is minimization of components and exclusion of everything besides the key functionality needed. Also you need to cut through the smoke of marketing hype and see that IBM is facing huge problem in its software development, problems that it tries to hide behind the smoke of three-letter acronyms and buzzwords. This pathological obsession with acronyms makes IBM marketing somewhat detached from reality (which might actually be a good thing; sometimes marketing materials they produce are wonderfully ironic). Among the latest fashionable but pretty meaningless recent acronyms are "IBM IT Service Management" - ITSM and "Information Technology Infrastructure Library" - ITIL; they are probably on par with the "Capability Maturity Model" (CMM) :-).

The Scriptability of Tivoli Products

The value of Tivoli like is greatly enhanced by the fact that like any large organization IBM has a lot of very talented people scattered in this huge bureaucratic maze and some of them are producing really interesting and innovative solutions despite their managers and the atmosphere of three or four letters acronyms hype :-). So it is important not to throw out the child with the bath-water and distinguish between good products (and support) from problems related by the existence of huge multilayer corporate bureaucracy and architectural perversions due to badly thought out acquisitions.

One of the strong features of Tivoli is that GUI functionality is also available via set of command line tools and in this sense classic Tivoli components (framework, TEC, TCM to name a few) are almost fully scriptable.

Old or "classic" Tivoli components also in a limited way can be extended via custom scripting components (especially Perl). This is true for endpoints and this is partially true for TEC (you can invoke any scripts from TEC rules) and framework.

One problem here is it looks like scriptability is a bastard child for Tivoli brass. Usage of Perl looks more like an accident initiated by "in the trenches" developers then a conscious management-approved strategy. The actual strategy was to push Java and is to provide as many closed source "add-on" components as market can bear. IBM hype about adopting open source looks really funny if we look how scriptability is handled in Tivoli products :-).

Still using command line tools provided by old Tivoli components, especially TEC, framework and configuration manager, one can still do quite a lot. You can also mix and match Tivoli with open source products. For example the correlation engine that is provided by TEC has no counterparts in open source world so it does not makes much sense to reinvent the bicycle. It is Prolog-based and while this is not probably the best choice it is programmable so in a way it can be classified as better then opened ;-). It is important to implement strong pre-filtering as simple operation are very clumsy implemented in TEC. It is suitable only for complex correlation: duplicate removal, filtering, etc should be done at the lower level.

As we mentioned before TMF is the main component of Tivoli with TEC as second in importance. The latter is pretty close to the status of an integral part of the framework, not just an add on. With some scripting those two components can provide 80% of functionality of many other components in Tivoli stack. In this sense we can call them "semi-open" is sense that you can extend then adding scripts in Perl ( or in other scripting language) to perform specific functions on remote computers. While other Tivoli products can be useful (and first of all TCM), but, generally using TMF and TEC you can do almost everything you want (and with some programming skills you can do better then using prepackaged semi-baked IBM extensions like Risk Manager or Security Compliance Manager). Tivoli monitoring 6.1 is semi-independent product and if it can be bought without the framework and TEC is can be used as a substitute for both.

Actually another IBM product ( Lotus Notes ) has a very similar distributed architecture with replication and can serve as a good reference point to the weaknesses of Tivoli in scripting (probably both product can share a large part of codebase). Both are proprietary messaging platforms but only Lotus Notes provides built-in scripting engine. You can think about Tivoli events as specialized SMTP or IM messages, transferred files as attachments and end points as clients communicating with the server. But the differences in the quality of implementation are simply tremendous because in Lotus Notes area probably due to the fact that in mail area Microsoft kicked IBM's ass and in Tivoli they do not have as strong and aggressive competitor. If, for example, we compare Lotus 6.5 client and servers (with Sametime instant messaging) and the recent Tivoli version it is clear which team has better, more flexible codebase (note that the recent version of Lotus Notes can work with DB2 which makes differences even smaller).

Also Lotus Notes clients can switch from one server to other and connections between servers can be dynamically rerouted: if one fails the other can pick-up messaging stream even if it cannot deliver all the messages. Tivoli has inflexible strict star architecture and that makes it much less fault tolerant. Without clusters Tivoli servers are the weakest link in the whole ESM architecture. And clusters drive prices through the roof. Paradoxically the best platform for Tivoli is not AIX servers but Solaris servers are they are more fault tolerant and can switch off faulty components dynamically.

Not that Lotus Notes is perfect (and Microsoft is working on proving that IBM does not understand componentization on the level that enables them to compete in retail software business in XXI century), but due to Microsoft pressure and more customer orientation they managed to be more agile, while Tivoli largely stagnated since IBM acquisition of the company in 1998. Of course stability of the codebase has its merits, but only up to a point.

IBM adopted Java as an internal development language and attempted to convert existing Tivoli components and write new in Java. Superficially this was a very logical decision as Java provides the level of machine independence necessary and sufficient for most Tivoli components. But Java is a deeply flawed language for system programming and any Java implementation is subject to JVM-hell and class libraries hell problems. If you use system-provided JVM then any upgrade of JVM can break Tivoli. So Tivoli should generally use its own JVM that should be upgraded independently of the system, the situation that creates a patching logistical mess. BTW even with this arrangement HP-UX has problems. If instillation procedure mixes the location of JVM and upgrade the wrong one and/op upgrades class libraries you also gets a problem.

Moreover Java applications usually use too many class libraries, loading them during application start makes the latter extremely sluggish. Tivoli Enterprise Console front-end is a classic example of this problem. In this case slow start is combined with low quality of interface. That means that "Java push" sometimes decreases availability and reliability of the components affected, which can be quite painful as Tivoli needs to be both very fast and reliable. Some Tivoli components like Advanced Monitoring 5.1 suffered from this Java hell and reliability problems for several years before IBM was able to stabilize them (luckily ITM 5.1 was eventually replaced by version 6.1 that does not use Java on endpoints; it does use Java based interface, though). Tivoli is probably too important enterprise system to rely on JVM and IBM might be better off absorbing the costs of development of custom compiled language based plug-ins to its so called "light-weight" end point. I do not understand why compiled language is so bad as all compilation targets in any Tivoli deployment are known in advance. Also Java as a development platform looks inferior to the tandem of scripting language (for example TCL or Perl) and a complied language (for example C).

Notes on pricing:

1. On TEC Pricing

   TEC pricing is highly variable but basic staff was not very expensive. Like most Tivoli products TEC is sold "per managed processor" and as such the price depends on the number of clients installed. If you can minimise it, the price might be OK. For example, the cost of a uniprocessor license for TEC for approximately $200 per CPU and that means that minimum is around $2K (you need to buy 1- unit minimum; the license includes Tivoli framework):

   • IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console Managed Processor License + SW Maintenance 12 Months (D510WLL) $213.00

   That means that classic TEC was an attractive solution for log aggregation: you need one minimum license to implement log aggregation for a half-dozen OS + a couple of different VPN boxes + a dozen of security devices in a midsize corporation (say, 400-500 servers). Actually quite a lot can be done with just one server that serve as LOGHOST and hosts all Tivoli environment including DB2 (or Oracle) database.
   

2. On Tivoli Monitoring Pricing

   As for monitoring Tivoli Monitoring Express ($795.00) was the only price competitive solution due to IBM insistence on licensing products "per core" (not per socket) which inflates the price rather quickly and taken into account mediocre nature of IBM software engineering, the question arise whether that the game is worth the candles.

   Tivoli Monitoring Express product offering includes the following software:

   • IBM DB2 Express

   • i5/OS Agent

   • Active Directory Agent

   • Linux OS Agent

   • Tivoli Data Warehouse

   • Tivoli Enterprise Portal

   • Tivoli Monitoring Express Server

   • Universal Agent

   • UNIX Log Alert Agent

   • UNIX OS Agent

   • Windows OS Agent

Minimization of Tivoli components

As long as you stick to minimum number of components (the rule "no more then seven" is a good guiding principle, for example TEC, TMF, ITM and TCM) Tivoli can be managed by a couple of administrators and for large and complex infrastructure it can provides some benefits despite high initial and, especially, maintenance prices. Like for any product of this type its usefulness significantly increases with the increase of the size and complexity of the infrastructure. This is first of all due to highly sophisticated correlation engine and the ability to use scripting for custom probes on endpoints. The main recipe for success is to have highly qualified system administrators and to extent Tivoli with open source tools, especially, with custom scripts (Perl is an excellent tool that can be used with Tivoli). Similarly buying too many components is an invitation to disaster as after magic number seven each couple of "large" components probably requires a dedicated administrator. Generally the number of Tivoli components deployed at enterprise should be kept at minimum both due to the level of complexity of the product and staffing limitations as return on investment after bare minimum quickly falls.

Tivoli framework has somewhat outdated in messaging world "star" architecture that consists of:

• Tivoli servers (TMR servers) Each TMR controls (and communicates with) a particular region consisting of one of more gateways and connected to this gateway endpoints. TMR usually contains TEC components including Prolog engine that is processing the events. Due to limitation of the Prolog engine the number of events the server can process without crashing is limited. Thus, it is extremely important to pre-filter events on the gateway (good practice in any case) but that is not strictly enforced by the current architecture and some Tivoli consultants are installing enterprise TMR servers without this component, exposing the users to above-mentioned risks.

  Among components of the server are:

  • Management console: An administrative view on the servers and the network. Outdated and primitive. Inconsistent, low quality (in comparison with, say, windows GUI ) interface, inability to exploit full power of GUI (in some areas drag and drop works, in other don't). No scripting.
    
  • Event console: A dismal product that displays events (actually part of TEC but Tivoli does not make sense without it). Not only outdated, but also very primitive. Note that older console cannot communicate with newer servers and upgrade of the server sometimes requires upgrade of the console as well. As consoles are installed on administrators PC this requires some additional efforts. Generally Tivoli event console looks more like a real relic that cannot be even classified as shareware: no scripting, no animated gifs, very limited browsing capabilities, extremely limited grouping capabilities, and so on and so forth. Adapting, say, Lotus Notes client codebase for this application would definitely result in a much better solution, but like in most large corporations one IBM architect does not know what other are doing
    
  • A set of command line tools for working with endpoints and running tasks remotely (they actually can also be run from any endpoint). That actually is a very strong feature of Tivoli as functionality of GUI is duplicated by command line tools and that partially compensates low quality and absence of scripting capabilities in the Tivoli GUI environment. Still the selection of options and uniformity between tools is rather weak even if measured by Unix standards. The impression is that those tools just evolved as they please without any central organizing authority.
    
• Gateways that collect information from several endnotes and optionally can preprocess event steams. The current implementation of a gateway is extremely weak and does not allow split of event stream so that each stream communicates with the specialized for particular function Tivoli server. So the model is strictly hierarchal. Gateway can contain a pre-filtering component for events and it is recommended to install it the central server is unable to process too many events each second and can crush under the accidental "event storm." This correlation engine is Java based and is completely different from TEC engine that is based on Prolog.
  
• Endnode agent that should be installed on each managed node and that serves as a platform for framework itself and all Tivoli add-ons (often called lightweight endpoints, but they are not that lightweight in reality :-). Each endnote agent contain an http server that can display some information about the agent status. There can be several endpoints on the server, each communicating with different servers (this is sometimes necessary due to the conceptual flaw in the current Tivoli architecture).

Conceptually Tivoli implementation consists of one or more regions. A region (TMR) is a hierarchical entity that consists of a single Tivoli server, one of more gateways and their clients (with endpoints installed). Endpoints are always communicating with server via a gateway. Gateway can have local correlation engine to filter events before passing them to TMR.

There is also a region connection facility, which includes support for multiple Tivoli regions that can be connected across different networks. IMHO one of the major shortcomings of such an architecture is that unlike mail clients or instant messaging clients endpoints can not work with different gateways and/or TMR servers for different classes of events (that can easily implemented on gateway level). So for example if you have two TMA servers, one for log aggregation and another for monitoring, then all endpoints that are subscribed to monitoring server are not accessible from the log aggregation server. That also greatly complicates recovery if TMR server failed (the operation Lotus Notes performs almost flawlessly).

Generally interaction between the TMR server, gateway and endpoints in Tivoli is implemented very weakly from the point of view of recovery: if for example you shutdown the server for a considerable period of time, both gateway and endpoints can crash under the load of unprocessed events: there is no way to re-route them even if you have additional TMRs. If gateway got a considerable amount of events (it can buffer them to a certain point) and gateway is still alive when you are restarting the TMR server, the situation can be even worse: you can experience the situation when you cannot start the TMR server as it crushes under the load of "storm" of buffered by gateways events.

I would like to stress that productive use of Tivoli does not need to expensive but saving can be achieved only with high-level skills in Unix administration, scripting (at least Perl, JavaScript and Korn shell) as well as database management skills. If you don't have those you better have deep pockets to pay for Tivoli consultants.

Note on Micromuse Acquisition

IBM plans to replace TEC with Netcool in 2012. This is a mixed blessing. The main "pro" claims are that Micromuse correlation engine is more scalable and needs less efforts for programming in typical situations (it is SQL-based).

But the main problem with Prolog engine utilized in TEC was never scalability. It was its complexity, or to be more correct, overcomplexity. Itt proved to be too complex (and less then adequate for simple and medium complexity monitoring tasks simultaneously). And simple situations are the most common in enterprise environment. At the same time very few customers are doing anything complex (expert system level staff) with TEC anyway, where Prolog does represent distinct advantage.

Also as a development environment Prolog rules programming reminds early 60th: bad diagnostics, bad tools, need to restart the server after changes in BAROC, etc. IBM completely screw this part of TEC, no question about it. Level of architectural thinking involved here from IBM side can be correctly called brain-dead. For example after two decades of in house development most TEC customers restart the TEC server after changing rules too( althouth this can be avoided even in current environment). That is a good example of idiosyncrasies which makes Tivoli environment a joke from the point of view of modern programming environments. Can you imagine the language programming environment that requires rebooting OS after the compilation of the shell ?

IBM also failed to extend prolog with Perl or other scripting language to make it more flexible and attractive for complex correlation tasks. Funny enough IBM did not own the Prolog engine used (which was another blunder on IBM Side).

Micromuse technology as the base of a new correlation engine does not mean that old TEC correlation engine needs to be abandoned. Some mixed solution are probably possible. Also there are many Prolog interpreter on the market including free. They can be used in case staff known Prolog really well and people are productive in the language.

Access to Tivoli information and documentation

IBM provides an excellent set of guides and Redbooks that significantly increase the value of the product due to know-how they contain. It cannot compensate Hamphy-Dumphy nature of the product with the documentation, but at least it helps to save face.

Redbooks, while mostly outdated, are actually pretty useful reading for the authors and users of competing products ;-). Of course they are of varying quality and in many cases 66% of the content is fluff, but still one can safely state that Tivoli, especially TEC, is a very well documented product.

Please note that Tivoli website sometimes behaves very strangely as it is a part of a huge IBM product line. For example, if you click Library link on Tivoli page and hope to get to Tivoli documentation you might be disappointed: this is a link to generic IBM products library. I hope that they will fix this someday...

Dr Nikolai Bezroukov

NEWS CONTENTS

• 20091005 : Tivoli Technical Exchange Webcasts ( softpanorama.org, Oct 5, 2009 )
• 20091005 : IBM - All Tivoli Web-based Titles Now Available via Education Pack Program ( IBM - All Tivoli Web-based Titles Now Available via Education Pack Program, )
• 20091005 : Tivoli Product End-of-Support Matrix ( Tivoli Product End-of-Support Matrix, )
• 20090301 : Microsofts Ballmer On Windows Server, Yahoo, Linux ( InformationWeek )
• 20081202 : IBM - Tivoli Framework Patch 4.1.1-TMF-0104 ( IBM - Tivoli Framework Patch 4.1.1-TMF-0104, Dec 2, 2008 )
• 20081202 : IBM - Tivoli fix pack Strategy Update ( IBM - Tivoli fix pack Strategy Update, )
• 20080423 : IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console Newsletter ( IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console Newsletter, Apr 23, 2008 )
• 20071120 : Tivoli Tivoli TME10 Mailing List How to create a TMF endpoint local ... ( developerWorks )
• 20071116 : ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/tivoli/tivoli-advisor/Tivoli-Adivisor-Issue-12.pdf ( softpanorama.org, Nov 16, 2007 )
• 20071116 : Tivoli Field Guide - Tivoli Assessment Tool (assess.pl) Guidelines for the use of the Assess tool and analysis of results obtained. ( Tivoli Field Guide - Tivoli Assessment Tool (assess.pl) Guidelines for the use of the Assess tool and analysis of results obtained., )
• 20071116 : IBM Software Support Tivoli Tivoli Technical Field Guides ( IBM Software Support Tivoli Tivoli Technical Field Guides, )
• 20071116 : Tivoli Global User Group Community Newsletter, Jan 2007 ( Tivoli Global User Group Community Newsletter, Jan 2007, )
• 20071116 : Tivoli Global User Group Community Newsletter, March 2007 ( Tivoli Global User Group Community Newsletter, March 2007, )
• 20070427 : 2007 Tivoli Technical User Conference directory ( 2007 Tivoli Technical User Conference directory, Apr 27, 2007 )
• 20060426 : NIST Security Configuration Checklists Program for IT Products ( NIST Security Configuration Checklists Program for IT Products, Apr 26, 2006 )
• 20060224 : Tivoli Links Gulf Breeze Software Partners Tivoli Consulting Training We are Tivoli experts ( Tivoli Links Gulf Breeze Software Partners Tivoli Consulting Training We are Tivoli experts, Feb 24, 2006 )
• 20060224 : IBM Tivoli Monitoring Flash demo ( IBM Tivoli Monitoring Flash demo, Feb 24, 2006 )
• 20060224 : IBM Redbooks Getting Started with IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 on Distributed Environments ( IBM Redbooks Getting Started with IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 on Distributed Environments, Feb 24, 2006 )
• 20060224 : IBM Redbooks Deployment Guide Series IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 ( IBM Redbooks Deployment Guide Series IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1, Feb 24, 2006 )
• 20060224 : Redbook/Implementing a Tivoli Solution for Central Management of Large Distributed Environments ( )
• 20060224 : IBM - Tivoli fix pack Strategy Update ( IBM - Tivoli fix pack Strategy Update, )
• 20060224 : Improve security and lower costs with more effective Identity Management ( softpanorama.org, )
• 20060224 : IBM Redbooks Enterprise Security Architecture Using IBM Tivoli Security Solutions ( IBM Redbooks Enterprise Security Architecture Using IBM Tivoli Security Solutions, )
• 20050402 : Micromuse Buy Gives IBM Strong But Overlapping Capabilities ( Micromuse Buy Gives IBM Strong But Overlapping Capabilities, Apr 2, 2005 )
• 20050402 : Tivoli Technical User Conference - 2006. Hilton Hotel in Chicago , IL April 23-27, 2006 . ( )
• 20050402 : Tivoli Impact Assessment Report ( Tivoli Impact Assessment Report, )

Old News ;-)

[Oct 5, 2009] Tivoli Technical Exchange Webcasts

IBM - All Tivoli Web-based Titles Now Available via Education Pack Program

All Tivoli Web-based courses are now available for purchase using Education Pack credits.

The IBM Education Packs are now even better. Why? All our Tivoli Web-based courses are now available for purchase using your Education Pack credits. From IBM Tivoli Access Manager to IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler courses, you can now apply your credits to the entire training roadmap!

More information can be found at: http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/education/wbt-edpack.html

Tivoli Product End-of-Support Matrix

Looks like classic Tivoli is going away in 2012 with the demise of TEC.

[Mar 01, 2009] Microsoft's Ballmer On Windows Server, Yahoo, Linux

InformationWeek

InformationWeek: I think you see VMware aggressively courting virtualization customers. Customers that I've spoken with are saying Microsoft is definitely coming from behind here. You mentioned it on stage here. There's Hyper-V's delay. Does Microsoft's entrance now into the virtualization space put it at a disadvantage in the virtualization world?

Ballmer: The choice is, you know, to be first to have share or not. I guess I prefer to be first to have share. Now, you've got to remember, this market has barely been scratched, less probably in the install base -- less than 5% of all systems run virtually. Virtualization is way too complicated, way too expensive today for people to take advantage of it, and it's way too isolated from the rest of everything that happens in application development to data center deployment and operations. That's not my way of criticizing, it's just if we're going to get -- if the phenomenon is going to fully take effect, then we've got to democratize it. That might be VMware, [but] they haven't shown moves in that direction. Somebody could argue it might be one of the open source alternatives. I like what we've got. I think we pay out on those problems.

That doesn't mean the other guys are going to go away. Obviously we recognize that fact and we provide good interoperability with VMware's virtual machine. But I don't think -- there's a simplicity with performance, with management, integrated management, with everything else, I think we're going to make a real difference. Sure, I wish we had everything we're announcing now and shipping this year a year ago, sure. Two years ago? Sure. But, believe me. We're going to make a big difference.

Comments

The fact of the matter is Linux isn't much cheaper to use than Microsoft, in terms of initial expense, continued support, or even in terms of development.

What Linux excels in is its large community of free, and sometimes paid developers to fix problems corrected more quickly than a single company can possible achieve. When you take Linus' recent comments into account, about him never caring or running a Linux server, only being focused on the desktop, one has to really wonder what how it can possibly compete with commercial giants like Sun and Microsoft.

What Microsoft excels in is their world-class support and a quality product at a reasonable price with an enormous ecosystem and unlimited developmental budget.

The commercial Linux vendors, Red Hat and Suse, can't offer the ecosystem Microsoft does, nor the leverage it has with its developers or vendors. The non-commercial Linux distributions are fun to play with, but totally impractical for business use.

The war goes on... Linux and most significantly Solaris are taking a bad beating. Once MS goes full bore in the virtualization space, it's going to blow Linux, Solaris and WMWare out of the market entirely, because of its massive commitment in research and functionality.

Finally, if MS doesn't like how its being treated in the US or Europe for that matter, it might just decide to stop selling to those markets -- where would that leave customers?

... ... ...

Ballmer: "I used to always joke with IBM, you know, we were opening up the desktop to them, and they were opening up the mainframe and the data center to us. And who out-hustled who is a big deal in terms of who wins."

[Dec 2, 2008] IBM - Tivoli Framework Patch 4.1.1-TMF-0104

Download package What is DD?

Download	RELEASE DATE	LANGUAGE	SIZE(Bytes)	Download Options
4.1.1-TMF-0104.tar	9/23/2008	English	111400000	FTP	DD
4.1.1-TMF-0104.README	9/23/2008	English	226000	FTP	DD
411TMF104.image.rpt	9/23/2008	English	134000	FTP	DD

IBM - Tivoli fix pack Strategy Update

[Apr 23, 2008] IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console Newsletter

Welcome to the first edition of the IBM TEC Newsletter which can be found at
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=203&uid=swg27011895

The Newsletter consists of

• News Focus
• Technical Information
• FAQs and Hints & Tips
• Training and Certification
• Portal - General
• Portal - Products

The Newsletter is updated as soon as relevant information is available ( and at least monthly). Visit the Newsletter frequently by bookmarking the Newsletter URL and give us your feedback.

If other colleagues could benefit from this information please ask them to send a blank email to [email protected] with "SUBSCRIBE - IBM TEC Newsletter" in the subject line

If you do not wish to receive this Newsletter, I apologise for contacting you. In this case would you return this mail with "UNSUBSCRIBE - IBM TEC Newsletter" in the subject line to remove your details from the distribution list.

Please send all comments/ feedback to [email protected]

[Nov 20, 2007] Tivoli Tivoli TME10 Mailing List How to create a TMF endpoint local ...

developerWorks

Hate installing TMF endpoint from the server? Here's how to create a TMF endpoint local install package.

http://bmitch.net/tivoli/

[Nov 16, 2007] Issue 12 of The Tivoli Advisor is now available at ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/tivoli/tivoli-advisor/Tivoli-Adivisor-Issue-12.pdf

In this issue
TADDM's Flexible Approach to Discovery
WebSphere Business Integration – an overview
An Introduction to Identity Management (IdM)
New name and new enhancements for Tivoli AF/REMOTE as it joins the IBM System Automation family
IBM launches Governance and Risk Management site

You can also download any of the other issues at http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/resource-center/overall/news-tivoli-advisor.jsp

Issue 13 will be following close on the heels of this one, so look out for it before the end of the year.

Tivoli Field Guide - Tivoli Assessment Tool (assess.pl) Guidelines for the use of the Assess tool and analysis of results obtained.

The Assess tool consists of a suite of perl 4 scripts intended for use in capturing, and assessing of significant architectural information related to an installed Tivoli environment. It is compatible with all currently supported Tivoli Management Framework versions.

IBM Software Support Tivoli Tivoli Technical Field Guides

Tivoli Field Guide - Event Processing Tools Available in IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console 3.8 The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the event processing tools available in IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console version 3.8. It also ties these tools together so the customer can make informed decisions when planning event management strategies and implementations. Pre-filtering, filtering, state-based correlation, rules, gateways, and endpoints are all discussed.

Tivoli Global User Group Community Newsletter, Jan 2007

IBM Software Support Toolbar - Now available for Firefox and IE7, with Tivoli content enhancements

The IBM Software Support Toolbar. With this tool, you have a quick and easy way to find highly requested software support pages in just a click or two. Adding the ability to search IBM's multiple resources, even narrowing that search down to a specific Brand/content.

For Tivoli users, you now have toolbar access in the Tivoli options, under 'More Resources' for OPAL, Technical Exchange Webcasts, IBM Education Assistant, Product Training, Certification, User Group community site and problem support escalation contacts.

You can install from: http://www- 306.ibm.com/software/support/toolbar/index.html? ibmsst=ibmTbMenu

Increase IT productivity with technically validated extensions available on-line via OPAL
The IBM Tivoli Open Process Automation Library (OPAL) is a comprehensive on-line catalog that includes more than 300 technically validated extensions developed by IBM Tivoli Business Partners and IBM. OPAL includes services and downloadable system integrations, automation packages, integration adapters, agents and configuration files.

Tivoli Global User Group Community Newsletter, March 2007

FREE SUPPORT CUSTOMERS: IBM Support Assistant
The IBM Support Assistant (ISA) is a free local software serviceability workbench that helps users resolve questions and problems with IBM software products. It provides quick access to support-related information along with serviceability tools for problem determination. Whether you need to find information on a software fix, collect key logs, or want to build skills on a particular product, the IBM Support Assistant can help get it done. Listing of available product plug-ins.

Download the IBM Support Assistant today!

[Apr 27, 2007] 2007 Tivoli Technical User Conference directory (1.7MB)

Again too much buzz-words like ITIL, service-oriented architecture, etc ;-). Also dilution of Tivoli brand into multitude of new products did not stopped...

• IBM US conferences - Tivoli - session descriptions - IBM Training - United States -- list of presentations

  • TEC

    • What's new with Tivoli Enterprise Console 3.9

    • Event monitoring and management essentials

    • Tivoli Enterprise console state correlation engine introduction

  • ITM 6.x

    • What's new in IBM Tivoli monitoring 6.2

    • Best practices managing ITM 6.1 with real world examples

    • ITM 6.1 - how to setup navigation effectively in TEP

    • ITM 6.1 visualizing data in TEP - workspaces and views

    • IBM Tivoli Universal Agent 6.1 - getting started

    • IBM Tivoli Universal Agent 6.1 - developing a real-life monitoring solution

    • ITM6.1--challenges of the new architecture and its advantages

    • IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 custom monitoring tools

    • Best practice resources for IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1

    • Best practices for IBM Tivoli monitoring 6.1 reliability and high availability

    • Using IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for messaging MQ configuration to manage WebSphere MQ resources

    • Monitoring databases with IBM Tivoli Monitoring (5.x/6.x)

    • Introduction to Netcool/OMNIbus and the evolution path of Tivoli Enterprise Console and OMNIbus

    • Managing virtualization with IBM Tivoli Monitoring

    • Lessons learned: OMEGAMON implementation by Lockheed Martin for a federal site

• Conference program

[Apr 26, 2006] NIST Security Configuration Checklists Program for IT Products Enterprise System Management Security Technical Implementation Guide

[Feb 24, 2006] Tivoli Links Gulf Breeze Software Partners Tivoli Consulting Training We are Tivoli experts

Posted by: martinc on Feb 24, 2006 - 08:31 PM
BlogArticle

When looking for information on the Tivoli products there are many places to try to find this information. In fact there are so many places, you can forget where they were. Here is a list of sites that are full of useful information (ok sometimes not so useful or helpful) to help you find what it is you are looking for.

If there is a link that is not on this entry, please let me know and I would be glad to add it (martin.carnegie at gulfsoft d-o-t com)

Gulf Breeze Software - have to start somewhere :)
http://www.gulsoft.com

IBM Tivoli Homepage
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli

Tivoli Search. Includes searches of the TME10 Listserv
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/sysmgmt/products/support/consolidated.html

Tivoli Redbooks
http://publib-b.boulder.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/portals/tivoli

IBM Tivoli Information Center - This contains online docs of all Tivoli products
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v3r1/index.jsp

IBM Tivoli Information Center - Configuration Manager documents
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v3r1/index.jsp?toc=/com.ibm.tivoli.itcm.doc/toc.xml

Support Technical Exchange (STE) - Webminars on various Tivoli products. There are also past webminars available for download
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/sysmgmt/products/support/supp_tech_exch.html

Tivoli User Groups
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/sysmgmt/products/support/Tivoli_User_Groups.html

Tivoli Security Forum - This is a recent addition from Lindsay Blanton III, nice work
http://www.tivolisecurityforums.com

Tivoli Inventory Signature files
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/tivoli_support/misc/CandO/TivoliCatalog

Tivoli FTP site for patches
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/tivoli_support/patches

AppDeploy - This is a great site to check for how to distribute a package. There is some Tivoli related information, but is generally around installing an application in an unattended mode
http://www.appdeploy.com/

Don't forgot to check Google! If you are getting some error message during your installs, check Google. There is a good chance that it is not a "Tivoli Problem".
http://www.google.com

ITIL Homepage - This is a standard that IBM (and many other companies) is following around best practices for Systems Management
http://www.itil.co.uk/

Some more links thanks to Harald Wikell, Chairman Swedish Tivoli USer Group

IBM Tivoli Field Guides
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/sysmgmt/products/support/Field_Guides.html

IBM Tivoli Catalog
http://www-18.lotus.com/wps/portal/tm

Tivoli Maillist Archive
http://tme10.uio.no/Apps/Tivoli-List.nsf/main?OpenView

Tek Tips TME 10 Forum
http://www.tek-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=29

IBM Developer Works Tivoli Forum
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/tivoli_forums.jsp

NetView Web page
http://www.nv-l.org/twiki/bin/view/Netview/WebHome

NetView Mailing list archive
http://lists.skills-1st.co.uk/mharc/html/nv-l

TSM User Group with good web site
http://www.jasi.com/TSMUG/index.php?page=links

[Feb 24, 2006] IBM Tivoli Monitoring Flash demo Play Flash demo Download Flash demo

In this demonstration we will see how Tivoli's new Enterprise Portal provides access to all of your enterprise's monitoring data in one location. It provides superior information visualization allowing you to take quick action on those issues that are affecting the health of your enterprise. We'll also see the new easy-to-manage virtualization capabilities of the new IBM System p5, like the ability to dynamically allocate CPU resources exactly where and when they're needed. The combination of the IBM p5 systems and the Tivoli Availability solutions provide an unsurpassed solution for Server reliability and manageability.

[Feb 24, 2006] IBM Redbooks Getting Started with IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 on Distributed Environments

The IBM Tivoli Monitoring Version 6.1 solution is the next generation of the IBM Tivoli family of products that help monitor and manage critical hardware and software in distributed environments. IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 has emerged from the best of the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Version 5 and OMEGAMON technologies. Integration of these products creates a unique and comprehensive solution to monitor and manage both z/OS and distributed environments.

IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 is easily customizable and provides real-time and historical data that enables you to quickly diagnose and solve issues with the new GUI via the IBM Tivoli Enterprise Portal component. This common, flexible, and easy-to-use browser interface helps users to quickly isolate and resolve potential performance problems.

This IBM Redbook covers planning, architecture, tuning, implementation, and troubleshooting of IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1. In addition, we offer scenarios for migration from Distributed Monitoring 3.7, and IBM Tivoli Monitoring 5.X coexistence with IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1.

This book is targeted for IT specialists who will be working on new IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 installations on distributed environments or implementing migration from Distributed Monitoring 3.7 or IBM Tivoli Monitoring 5.X coexistence.

[Feb 24, 2006] IBM Redbooks Deployment Guide Series IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1

This IBM Redbook focuses on the planning and deployment of IBM Tivoli Monitoring Version 6.1 in small to medium and large environments.

The IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 solution is the next generation of the IBM Tivoli family of products that help monitor and manage critical hardware and software in distributed environments. IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 has emerged from the best of the IBM Tivoli Monitoring V5 and OMEGAMON technologies. Integration of these products makes a unique and comprehensive solution to monitor and manage both z/OS and distributed environments.

IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 is easily customizable and provides real-time and historical data that enables you to quickly diagnose and solve issues with the new GUI via the IBM Tivoli Enterprise Portal component. This common, flexible, and easy-to-use browser interface helps users to quickly isolate and resolve potential performance problems.

The target audience for this book is IT Specialists who will be working on new IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 installations.

Redbook/Implementing a Tivoli Solution for Central Management of Large Distributed Environments

Chapter 1. The challenges of managing an outlet environment
Chapter 2. The Outlet Solution overview
Chapter 3. The Outlet Systems Management Solution Architecture
Chapter 4. Installing the Tivoli Infrastructure
Chapter 5. Creating profiles, packages and tasks
Chapter 6. Deployment

IBM - Tivoli fix pack Strategy Update When will we ship fix packs?

The available dates on which fix packs may ship for 2004 through 2008 are listed below. Not all products will ship a fix pack on these dates, but if a product does ship a fix pack, it must be on one (or more) of these dates. This will enable customers to plan maintenance windows around these dates.

• 2004 fix pack target dates: April 30th, July 2nd, Oct 1st, Dec 17th
• 2005 fix pack target dates: April 1st, July 1st, Sept 30th, Dec 16th
• 2006 fix pack target dates: March 31st, June 30th, Sept 29th, Dec 22nd
• 2007fix pack target dates: March 30th, June 29th, Sept 28th, Dec 21st
• 2008 fix pack target dates: March 28th, June 27th, Sept 26th, Dec 19

Improve security and lower costs with more effective Identity Management

Ever-increasing numbers of users are getting "connected." That's good for business but it poses a host of security, privacy and auditing challenges at a time when cost reduction is essential. Tivoli Identity Management solutions can help you satisfy user needs, optimize security and keep cost under control. Download this Identity Management whitepaper now to learn about the most cost-efficient identity management solutions utilizing reusable solution infrastructure.

IBM Redbooks Enterprise Security Architecture Using IBM Tivoli Security Solutions

[Apr 2, 2005] Micromuse Buy Gives IBM Strong But Overlapping Capabilities

IBM hopes the Micromuse acquisition will strengthen its comparatively weak Tivoli NetView network management offering and position the company to address the requirements of converged voice and data networks for both enterprises and telecommunications companies (telcos). However, Tivoli has limited presence in the market for managing telco networks, and customers will likely will be skeptical of an inexperienced newcomer. Gartner believes that another, unstated reason for the acquisition is the need to dramatically increase the scalability of Tivoli's event management. This will be necessary for IBM's service-oriented architecture strategy, which combines business, security and IT infrastructure events. However, Micromuse's functionality overlaps with that of IBM's own Tivoli Enterprise Console (TEC) product, which has an important installed base that Tivoli cannot afford to alienate. TEC and Netcool coexist and exchange events at a number of customer sites, but in the long term, Tivoli cannot maintain two competing, overlapping products. IBM will aim to have the best of Tivoli and Micromuse functionality, and a smooth migration to a future combined product, but must select one base architecture or the other. Gartner believes it will likely be Micromuse Netcool, due to the requirement for real-time, scalable event handling.

Recommendations

• Micromuse customers: Immediately move to strengthen your service and support contracts, and consider alternative contingency plans in case IBM's road map does not address your requirements.
• Tivoli TEC customers: Expect significant changes that will improve your aging framework architecture and its functionality, but plan for a slow, controlled migration.
• Tivoli NetView customers: Negotiate for rapid, assisted transition to an improved Micromuse-based network management offering.
• Tivoli Risk Manager, Micromuse Netcool for Security Management and Micromuse GuardedNet neuSecure customers: Expect a statement from IBM identifying the single strategic product, and plan for a likely migration, because three overlapping and competing security information and event management (SIEM) products will not be supported.
• Prospective Tivoli TEC and Tivoli Business Systems Manager and Micromuse Netcool customers: Postpone new investments in event correlation and business service management until IBM offers a product road map.
• Prospective customers for Tivoli's and Micromuse's SIEM offerings: Unless you are a current Tivoli or Netcool customer looking for a single-vendor offering, investigate more functional available alternatives.

Tivoli Technical User Conference - 2006. Hilton Hotel in Chicago , IL April 23-27, 2006 .

MARK YOUR CALENDARS: IBM Tivoli is pleased to announce two Tivoli Technical User Conferences. The first conference will be held at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago , IL April 23-27, 2006 .

This four day conference promises to be the most dynamic events ever with a new compelling agenda that includes first rate IT education, industry thought leader and customer speakers, and the latest information on how to extend ITIL by leveraging IBM IT Service Management to automate and integrate IT processes for a more efficient and effective IT organization.

• ACTION: Tivoli Technical User conference curriculum survey. Take 8 minutes and let the Tivoli team know what technical presentations you want at the TTUCs before February 1st.
• Calling all customer speakers to present: 1 FREE ticket for each approved presentation!

The Hilton Chicago, located at 720 South Michigan Ave is right in the heart of beautiful downtown Chicago and will serve as the host hotel for the conference. One of the leading convention hotels in Chicago, the Hilton brings the best of conference facilities to the attendees of the Tivoli Technical User conference.

[PDF] Tivoli Impact Assessment Report Old NASA report. View expressed is similar to this page: heavy, over-engineered product suffering from excessive complexity.

Recommended Links

Softpanorama Recommended

Top articles

Sites

• Administrator skills roadmap for IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console 3.9 Good short PDF document with major links
• Tivoli Documentation A-Z -- more or less organized page that permits finding the product you are interested in (corrected Sep 29, 2011. Hat tip to Erik Evenson)
• developerWorks Tivoli -- free development efforts. A very good, well organized site with all major links to Tivoli products
• Tivoli Knowledge Center - Business Partner training
• IBM Software Support Tivoli
• IBM Tivoli Library
• Tivoli quick map Demos, offers, training, more - IBM Tivoli software less useful page from the development group.
• Tivoli APAR notification page
• Tivoli fix pack Strategy Update
• Field_Guides -- Access needs IBM account

Support cycle

IBM Software Support - Overview

The elements of the enhanced Software Support Lifecycle Policy for selected Information Management, IBM Lotus, IBM Rational, IBM Tivoli and WebSphere products are:

• Provide a minimum of 5 years of product technical support beginning at the planned availability date of the version/release of the product.
• Ensure support is available for all IBM components of a product or until the product or bundle is withdrawn from support. In addition, all components of a bundle have a common End of Service date.
• Publish a notice of support discontinuance ("End of Service") for a product at least 12 months prior to the effective date.
• Align the effective date of support discontinuance ("End of Service") to occur on common dates either in the months of April or September.
• Make support extensions available, for an additional fee, for a minimum period of three (3) years following the product's effective support discontinuance date. Support extensions are designed to allow migration to the current release to be successfully completed.
• Applies to selected IPLA licensed software. A list of the products within the Information Management, IBM Lotus, IBM Rational, IBM Tivoli and WebSphere portfolios that have the enhanced Support Lifecycle is located here.

Standard IBM Support Lifecycle Policy

Products that are not currently covered by the enhanced IBM Software Support Lifecycle policy continue to have the existing software support lifecycle policy, which includes:

• Provide a minimum of 3 years of product technical support beginning at the planned availability date of the version/release of the product.
• Ensure support is available for all IBM components of a product or until the product or bundle is withdrawn from support. In addition, all components of a bundle have a common End of Service date.
• Publish a notice of support discontinuance ("End of Service") for a product at least 12 months prior to the effective date.
• Align the effective date of support discontinuance ("End of Service") to occur on common dates either in the months of April or September.
• Make product support extensions available, where possible, that are designed to allow migration to the current release to be completed. For additional information on product technical support extensions beyond the three-year minimum period, contact your IBM representative. For details see the announcement letter USA Ann# 203-204 effective August 8, 2003.

IBM Software Support Tivoli product lifecycle dates

Field Guides
(Access needs IBM account)

Tivoli Field Guide - TEC 3.9 State Correlation Engine: How to Prevent TEC from Becoming Flooded The purpose of this field guide is to describe the functionality of the IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console state correlation engine introduced in ITEC version 3.8. It also outlines the configuration and design aspects as well as gives hints for installing and troubleshooting. Some case studies from different customers are discussed at the end.

• Tivoli Field Guide - IBM Tivoli Switch Analyzer Troubleshooting Guide The IBM Tivoli Switch Analyzer Troubleshooting Guide v2.0 is designed to assist users in identifying and resolving common technical problems that may occur with IBM Tivoli Switch Analyzer v1.3. If using IBM Tivoli Switch Analyzer v1.2.1 or earlier, then please refer to the IBM Tivoli Switch Analyzer Troubleshooting Guide v1.0. This guide (v2.0) lists common symptoms and problem areas, and then provides a solution for the user to implement in each case.
  
• Tivoli Field Guide - Troubleshooting the Web Gateway Component of IBM Tivoli Configuration Manager 4.2 Troubleshooting the Web Gateway component (hereafter referred to as Web Gateway) of IBM Tivoli Configuration Manager can be a complex task. This field guide includes information about installing Web Gateway, using the log files, verifying and debugging a Web Gateway installation, understanding the configuration files, and using the trace facility. This field guide also includes some frequently asked questions that can help you locate and fix problems.
  
• Tivoli Field Guide - Troubleshooting Tivoli Inventory (part 4) - UNIX Scanning As with the PC based wscanner, there is also a UNIX based wscanner. This will be discussed in the fourth part of "Troubleshooting Tivoli Inventory."
  
• Tivoli Field Guide - Troubleshooting Tivoli Inventory (part 2) - Distribution Troubleshooting This section of the troubleshooting guide will cover where to look for problems when an InventoryConfig profile is distributed. The mechanism used is Mdist 2, so we will look at the various log files and commands to help diagnose problems.
  
• Tivoli Field Guide - IBM Tivoli Identity Manager, Version 4.5: Defining and Extending Workflows with JavaScript and Application Extensions To implement The implementation of Tivoli Identity Manager 4.5 Tivoli Identity Manager, Version 4.5, you must complete involves a number of different tasks. Among these tasks is the implementation of the customer’s provisioning- related business processes using the workflow capabilities of Tivoli Identity Manager Workflow capabilities.
  
• Tivoli Field Guide - Endpoint Management Best Practices: Necessary Processes for Endpoint Management Endpoint health and reliability represent the primary causes of application failure within a Tivoli environment. Ensuring endpoint health requires a consistent set of processes and procedures to which all members of an IT Organization using Tivoli must adhere. This Field Guide presents the fundamental processes for Endpoint Management that should be implemented by an IT organization when working with endpoints.
  
• Tivoli Field Guide - Compatibility Guide for Tivoli Applications A Guide for the Latest IBM Tivoli Software Compatibility and Interoperability This document was written as a planning guide for Tivoli Project Managers and Administrators who are beginning to think about the new IBM Tivoli Software product line. It should be used as a tool to begin any necessary upgrades of operating systems, platforms, applications, databases, and so forth that are not supported by the new product lines to achieve maximum value from the IBM Tivoli products as well as to maintain interoperability and compatibility with the software.

IBM Support Get access need ICN

IBM Software Support

Support Cycle

IBM - Tivoli fix pack Strategy Update When will we ship fix packs?
The available dates on which fix packs may ship for 2004 through 2008 are listed below. Not all products will ship a fix pack on these dates, but if a product does ship a fix pack, it must be on one (or more) of these dates. This will enable customers to plan maintenance windows around these dates.

• 2004 fix pack target dates: April 30th, July 2nd, Oct 1st, Dec 17th
• 2005 fix pack target dates: April 1st, July 1st, Sept 30th, Dec 16th
• 2006 fix pack target dates: March 31st, June 30th, Sept 29th, Dec 22nd
• 2007 fix pack target dates: March 30th, June 29th, Sept 28th, Dec 21st
• 2008 fix pack target dates: March 28th, June 27th, Sept 26th, Dec 19

Tivoli Product End-of-Support Matrix

Tivoli User Groups

tme10 mailing list is the main list for Tivoli questions. I wouldn't recommend staying subscribed to the list
unless you have an ongoing interest in Tivoli as it is rather high volume; you can read the list via Gmane

tme10 mailing list gatewayed to Gmane
news://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.tivoli.general

• Tivoli user group technical discussion forums http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/tivoli/
• TUG Newsletter http://www.tivoli-ug.org/newsletter.php
• Tivoli Information Exchange http://tie.tivoli-ug.org/
• Global Tivoli User Group Community Web site www.tivoli-ug.org
• Tivoli Global User Group Support Team.

UK:

• tivoli_list

IBM Customer Number Also known as "ICN" and "Customer ID". A 7-digit code (made up of numbers and/or letters) that identifies a customer's IBM software support contract. Within the IBM Software Support Web site, ICNs must be entered as seven digits. Some customers might receive ICNs with six or eight digits. If you received a 6-digit ICN, enter a zero followed by the six digits of the ICN. If you received an 8-digit ICN, you need only enter the last seven digits.

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

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Last modified: March 12, 2019