HP updates management tools

New versions of ITIL v3-friendly Service Manager, 9.20, and Content Management System, 9.0, have been released. Details on the enhancements, from Network World, are as follows:

For starters, HP updated its Configuration Management System(CMS), which includes its Universal Configuration Management Database (UCMDB) and Discovery & Dependency Mapping (DDM) software.

New to CMS 9.0 is a module called Integration Studio, which is designed to make integration and federation easier.

Integration Studio is the next step in the evolution of HP’s modeling environment, which customers use to model the services and applications they’re supporting, Flesh says. “It makes it much easier to define new services and new applications, get them modeled, get them up and running, and get the benefits of the Configuration Management System much more quickly,” he says.

HP also expanded the discovery capabilities in DDM 9.0, specifically for virtualized environments. The software can perform event-driven discovery for VMware environments and detect when new virtual machines are created or when virtual machines are moved with technologies such as VMware VMotion. These changes are then automatically updated in HP’s UCMDB.

Also in CMS 9.0, HP announced new ties to third-party tools, including Troux, an enterprise architecture tool, and Aperture Vista, a data center planning and management tool.

“Those [integrations] give us extended capabilities within the configuration management environment to help customers manage their services all the way from the top-level enterprise architecture down into the details, including the infrastructure layer and down to the data center-level power and cooling systems and racks,” Flesh says.

HP also announced Service Manager 9.20, with enhancements that are intended to streamline operations for users and strengthen links to other applications in HP’s management software portfolio.

A redesigned Web user interface in Service Manager 9.20 is cleaner and more intuitive, and it requires fewer clicks to accomplish tasks, HP says. Service desk agents can customize their own MySM dashboards so they can view role-specific summary data at a glance.

Full story here.