Service Providers Are Selling New Services to the Small Enterprise With Autonomic Computing Technologies From Singlestep and IBM

Market Wire, February, 2005

Singlestep Technologies today announced the release of a new Autonomic Computing offering for Mid-market service providers that allow them to deliver new On-Demand services. Expanding Singlestep Unity's autonomic capabilities for remote management and monitoring services, the Singlestep Unity/AME solution integrates elements from the IBM Autonomic Computing Toolkit to provide the Mid-market a cost-effective, high-value root cause analysis capability. This functionality is part of an overall Unity solution deployed to remotely monitor and manage customers' networks.

The solution, which was first installed at LAN Solutions, Inc., took less than two days to install, and is already helping to provide increased revenue for the company in a monthly recurring service fee. LAN Solutions is now using Unity to provide this On-Demand service to over 15 of their small-to-medium sized business customers.

"With the integration of Unity and IBM's autonomic computing technologies, we have dramatically reduced the time it takes for our technicians to analyze and identify a network problem at one of our clients' sites," said Victor Kellan, president and CEO of LAN Solutions. "Approximately 80 percent of the time required to solve a problem is spent analyzing data -- just to identify what the problem is. By automating that process, Unity cuts that time to almost zero, helping us quickly determine the root cause of a problem. We've also been able to increase our revenues by being able to offer a new level of service to our small enterprise customers."

Using elements from the IBM Autonomic Computing Toolkit in combination with their Singlestep Unity solution, Singlestep has created a cost-effective, high-value root cause analysis solution that allows a Mid-market service provider to immediately improve the value of their remote monitoring and management service offering. With this solution, service providers can start increasing recurring revenue by adding more customers with fewer new support staff, streamline and reduce the cost of delivering these services, and add greater visibility thereby reducing support costs and burdens.

"The Singlestep Unity/IBM AME solution is a good example of autonomic capabilities that are available today through a collaborative effort between Singlestep and IBM," said Audrey Rasmussen, Vice President, Enterprise Management Associates. "The value of on demand applications, like this advanced root cause solution, offers service providers with increased revenue opportunities, and IT organizations with higher functionality solutions at a lower cost."

"We are pleased about how the teams from Singlestep and IBM really worked together to quickly bring this solution to the market," said Dave Bartlett, director, Autonomic Computing, IBM. "Singlestep's product offering is an example of how the mid-market can benefit from autonomic technologies right now, as well as how IBM can help ISVs bring their technology to market faster with the resources we make available to them."

Singlestep has been working with IBM as an Autonomic Computing business partner for over a year and a half. Autonomic Computing, a key enabler for an On-Demand business, is a technology foundation that allows IT infrastructures to become more self-managing. Autonomic Computing simplifies the increasingly complex requirements of IT systems, while allowing IT management to concentrate on actual business issues and innovation.

"We're excited that we can now see a clear path for market adoption of our autonomic technology," says Chris Noble, CEO of Singlestep. "We've always thought that our ability to integrate, analyze, and automate network events would be adopted initially by the mid-tier service providers, and with the help of IBM we've been able to bring it to market sooner. We're now seeing aggressive adoption from these mid-market service providers looking to add new services."

Singlestep Unity is used to collect management information from a variety of management systems. For installations with the root-cause analysis component, this information is then converted within Unity to the Common Base Event format. This format is a key component in the communication between Singlestep and IBM technologies. The network information, which is currently in the Common Base Event format, is then forwarded to IBM's Autonomic Management Engine (AME).

AME, along with a newly developed IBM resource model, provides the information for the root-cause analysis. The information then seamlessly feeds back into Unity for processing. Unity receives the root-cause notification and takes appropriate action to update, notify, and potentially repair the issue. Unity provides this information to IT technicians immediately so they are able to quickly and easily identify and resolve problems within their network as soon as the problem occurs.

Initial results for the Unity/AME solution have shown an average decrease of 30 percent in actionable events for NOC staff. Additionally, the customer is able to continually increase monthly recurring revenues and margins as more customers are added to the service -- while requiring fewer new engineers and support staff as they grow the business. For more information visit www.singlestep.com.