HP unveils tools to assess enterprise IT performance
Software and hardware vendor HP has announced of a new set of tools aimed at IT executives which are designed to help assess the IT performance of an organisation.
The new software, called the HP IT Performance Suite, provides tools to help tech executives measure, benchmark and improve IT performance, the company announced on Wednesday.
HP also said the real value of the software lies in its enterprise-wide approach and interoperability with HP and non-HP software.
"[Until now] a lot has been focused on area-of-expertise by area-of-expertise... you end up with all of these interesting point solutions that spread across the IT organisation," Don Galles, specialist sales director at HP, told ZDNet UK ahead of the announcement.
"So the idea was to create a dashboard that someone at a high level can look at, because most of our software products in the IT space are aimed at the practitioners doing the work. We wanted to provide something for the guys actually making the decisions so they could have a cross-discipline view of what is going on."
The IT Performance Suite includes the IT Executive Scorecard, which the company said provides insight into key performance indicators (KPI) for employees at various levels. It is based on the open IT Data Model allowing it to integrate data from multiple sources, including third-party products, HP said.
The suite also integrates industry standards such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and the Executive Scorecard will come with more than 50 best-in-class KPIs included as standard.
HP also said it will be launching the CIO Edition Standard as "a persona-orientated" product that can provide chief information officers with financial planning and analysis, project and portfolio management, and asset management modules. It will also include over 20 financial and project health KPIs, HP added.
The company did not say when exactly it will release the IT Performance Suite, Executive Scorecard or CIO Edition Standard but did say they are "expected to be available soon". It added that most of the component units of the suite will be available as a service or for on-site deployment.
While it is enterprise organisations that will benefit most from the software initially, Galles said he expects to see it filter down into smaller businesses in the future.
"Enterprises will always be the early adopters on something like this," Galles said. "Over time the capabilities in the dashboard will become more become more specific to vertical markets, they'll become more extensive, the connectors for the individual applications that are common to this market will begin to be rolled into it, and when that starts to happen it becomes more and more sensible for a smaller company."