Intelligent EBM

Intelligent Enterprise Baseline Management (EBM) is the most advanced practical application of systematic control strategy for IT operations today.

Intelligent Enterprise Baseline Management technology for computer systems goes beyond today’s point solutions that provide isolated protection against human error, data transmission errors, software bugs, malicious code such as viruses and worms, or hardware malfunctions. Virtually every industry in the world today has computers in mission critical roles that require a systematic approach to both managing business risk and minimizing cost, and virtually every organization is employing a set of these point solutions. Still there are chronic security and compliance issues across all industries and IT support remains the largest component of IT total cost. These point solutions are not getting the job done. The need for the broader control scope and holistic visibility offered by EBM technology is being driven by the enterprise need to focus IT resources proactively on assuring continuous operations that directly impact the bottom line.

EBM is accomplished by proactively sorting through hundreds of thousands of configuration attributes on each computer in the enterprise empowering system administrators to quickly identify undesirable situations while providing workflow capabilities that enable the administrator to respond and enforce target configuration baseline states.

The EBM approach differs fundamentally from all the point solutions referred to above. It renders visible the proximity of enterprise computer systems to an established, desired baseline. If you don’t know how far your systems are from their desired state, then you’re not using an EBM technology. The discussion of baselines in EBM refers to the comprehensive characterization of configuration, performance, and process status of enterprise computers and networks that defines organizational success. It is this holistic approach to visibility and control that makes EBM fundamentally different from other tools and essential to raising IT operations to a new level of management capability.

EBM technology enables IT organizations to define comprehensively what “OK” means for their systems, provides a visible picture for system or security administrators of what is “OK” and is not “OK” on an ongoing basis, and then enables them to actually make all of their systems “OK” from a central control point.

The term intelligent EBM refers to an advanced EBM, like the StatePointPlus technology from BCC, that couples EBM capabilities with an expert system that can apply complex monitoring and control designs through flexible, automated baseline rules. The flexibility and remote control of Intelligent EBM accommodates enterprise diversity in policies, configurations, and production needs while still using a common control plane across the enterprise.

With the application of intelligent EBM technology, your organization will:

• Implement EBM visibility and control quickly with current resource constraints
• Drive higher to higher levels of production reliability
• Continually strengthen and status your security program
• Lower business risk in both product and production
• Demonstrate regulatory compliance and accountability