IBM Software Solution Brief

Simplify and consolidate data protection for better business resultsIBM Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center simplifies user experience, speeds problem resolution

Highlights●● ● ●View the entire infrastructure through

a single pane of glass, simplifying management of thousands of backups at multiple sites

●● ● ●Monitor from any location using any browser-enabled device

●● ● ●Speed root-cause analysis and problem resolution with intuitive backup problem management

●● ● ●Reduce costs and errors by promoting integrated team collaboration—easily route issues between administrators, operators and help-desk employees

As organizations of all sizes adapt to embrace clouds, big data and analytics, IT infrastructures need to become smarter and more efficient. When IT tools are easier to use and when they present key information in a straightforward and intuitive manner, they enable faster responses to changing conditions—and can minimize the business impact of technical issues.

On average, 32 percent of IT infrastructure budgets are allocated to labor.1 In fact, storage solutions have often required additional expert administration due to their complexity and the sheer volume of data being handled—in large organizations, there might be thousands of target systems to back up and multiple backup storage repositories, often spread over multiple locations. It can be very difficult for administrators and managers to visualize the entire infrastructure and to diagnose and address problems quickly when they occur.

IBM® Tivoli® Storage Manager Operations Center, a next-generation graphical user interface (GUI) introduced in IBM Tivoli Storage Manager v6.4.1, provides advanced visualization, built-in analytics and integrated workflow automation features that leapfrog traditional backup user interfaces—and dramatically simplify backup administration.

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Solution BriefIBM Software

Smarter backup and recovery managementTivoli Storage Manager has long provided centralized, auto-mated data protection to help reduce risks associated with data loss. This highly scalable application now helps users manage more data than ever with less infrastructure and less complexity—especially important on today’s smarter planet, where instrumented, interconnected and intelligent businesses collect, process and store more information than ever before. Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center is a critical compo-nent that can improve data protection and deliver a simplified user experience for both backup administrators and non-experts.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center provides an advanced visual dashboard, built-in analytics and integrated workflow automation features to dramatically simplify backup administration.

Is anythingbreaking or

broken?

Is dataprotected? Is there

enough capacity?

Are thebackup servers

healthy?

“Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center is the best thing to happen to Tivoli Storage Manager since incremental forever.”

— Wanda Prather, member of Washington-based Tivoli Storage Manager user group

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Solution BriefIBM Software

Next-generation dashboard simplifies backup administrationTivoli Storage Manager Operations Center intuitively and efficiently unifies backup administration and management. The web-based dashboard aggregates information about the backup environment into a single pane of glass—including the systems, virtual machines and applications being backed up, backup servers, and storage repositories.

The visibility provided by Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center makes it easy to manage backup tasks running across multiple backup servers. And beyond the infrastructure and the logical tasks surrounding it, users can also see how well—or not—those tasks have been carried out. The health and capacity of backup systems, as well as task fulfillment, is evident at a glance—enabling users to see, for example, whether an overnight backup went smoothly, or which backups require investigation and possible corrective action.

The web-based GUI makes it easy to accomplish all of this anytime, anywhere—whether from a traditional desktop computer or workstation, a laptop, or even a browser-enabled mobile device. This tremendously improves access and conve-nience for backup administrators and data center managers.

Simplified IT team collaboration enables distributed problem solvingTivoli Storage Manager Operations Center enables administra-tors to view the backup history for individual systems, focusing on key error messages. Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center proactively detects problems and brings them to the attention of the backup administrator through the GUI, along

with providing essential information needed for resolution. Instead of having to search through error logs, users can simply view the dashboard to see what went wrong, where and why. This positively affects service levels by making it easy to under-stand which tasks are likely to involve the biggest business impact and by delivering a prioritized response—it can even help to predict potential problems of a similar nature and resolve them in advance, reducing their impact to zero.

Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center enables almost any IT team member—not just Tivoli Storage Manager experts—to handle everyday backup administration tasks, presenting information in an easy-to-understand format. In many cases, non-specialists can investigate and resolve backup issues, which enables these tasks to be accomplished faster and frees experts to focus on new projects. The solution includes a built-in service for assigning problems among support teams, significantly enhancing team collaboration in order to speed, simplify and lower the cost of backup problem resolution.

For more complex issues—ones that still require an expert backup administrator to solve—Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center has been designed to drive a quick and effective resolution process. It does so by empowering backup specialists with a pop-up command builder that can be used from the web dashboard. This command builder enables experts to take necessary corrective actions quickly, then updates the dashboard to ref lect the fix status—helping to dramatically improve backup, archive, and restore problem-resolution times, and to reduce complexity.

Please Recycle

Why IBM?IBM solutions are designed to deliver a simplified user experience and leverage applied analytics to enable global data availability. Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center is just one example of how IBM offerings are more open, intelligent and consumable. Built on a solid foundation of trusted technol-ogy, IBM solutions are backed by more than 20 years of data protection experience with more than 20,000 valued clients.

For more informationTo learn more about IBM Tivoli Storage Manager with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center, please contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit: ibm.com/software/tivoli/features/storage/tivoli-storage- manager-operations-center

Additionally, IBM Global Financing can help you acquire the software capabilities that your business needs in the most cost-effective and strategic way possible. We’ll partner with credit-qualified clients to customize a financing solution to suit your business and development goals, enable effective cash management, and improve your total cost of ownership. Fund your critical IT investment and propel your business forward with IBM Global Financing. For more information, visit: ibm.com/financing

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2013

IBM Corporation Software Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589

Produced in the United States of America June 2013

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, and Tivoli are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

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1ESG Research Report, 2013 IT Spending Intentions Survey, January 2013.

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