IBM Unveils Flurry of New Service ProductsIBM Unveils Flurry of New Service Products

IBM on Tuesday introduced a range of combined software and services offerings designed to help businesses automate monitoring IT asset performance and service agreements. IBM says it will price the offerings more like software products than services, starting at $50,000.

The vendor's new Business of IT Executive Workshop service assesses the IT processes and skills necessary to implement and run an IT environment capable of meeting a company's business priorities. It provides an end-to-end, enterprise-wide view of IT operations based on the Component Business Model (CBM) approach.

The Service Management Strategy and Planning service allows for collaborative planning to define a user's IT service management strategies, conducts high-level and detailed capability maturity assessments, and creates a practical approach to implementing best practices, IBM says.

The Service Management Design service features an integrated set of planning and design projects that help businesses create what IBM says is a clearly defined service management model with full-lifecycle approach, best practices, industry process frameworks and open standards.

The IT Optimization Solution Framing service is designed to help increase the value of a company's IT infrastructure investments by pinpointing inefficiencies, identifying opportunities for improvement, and defining initiatives to better align the IT environment with business objectives.

The Infrastructure Strategy and Planning service assesses readiness and benchmarks IT maturity levels of technical architecture and recommends, trains and oversees execution of a new more flexible and responsive IT roadmap.

IBM is also on Tuesday announced a new service from IBM Middleware Services. The Service Management Implementation service is designed to build on businesses' existing assets to increase investment value and deliver the optimal integration and process automation required for effective service delivery of IT to the business.