This same application service management platform can be applied to streamline the myriad of tasks involved with application provisioning. Organizations apply DASM tools to manage service levels by dynamically configuring, activating and scaling enterprise applications based on user demand. In this way, organizations gain three key benefits:

• The ability to simplify application management and deployment

• The ability to reduce IT costs

• The ability to scale as needed without any waste in resources.

This frees businesses from the fragmented processes that added unnecessary cost and complexity to application deployment toward a more unified process of optimizing application service management.

As shown in the above graphic, this unified approach involves the following steps occurring automatically, based on predefined rules:

• Define and enforce application service levels

• Configure and package standardized application services

• Dynamically provision and activate applications to least cost infrastructure

• Dynamically scale application services based on service level agreements

• Dashboard to meter, chargeback and report on application service utilization and costs

Using this method reduces the cost of software development and speeds time-to-market. Applications can actually be provisioning and activated in minutes, not days. And more importantly, processes occur more consistently than ever before. In addition, this added visibility into IT resource usage enables businesses to chargeback individual departments for system usage.

Planning for DASM

Implementing DASM does not require a major transformation. Organizations can begin by gaining an understanding of the current state of application service management process and identifying the stakeholders involved. The first step is to query architects and planners to investigate the most efficient means in several areas:

• Define and enforce business service levels for critical applications?
• Standardize and automate application packaging and configuration so that application services can dynamically flex to meet changing business demand?
• Provision applications on-demand onto the least cost infrastructure?
• Optimize application performance based on changing demand in real-time?
• Meter shared application services based on SLAs?

Once they have these answers, organizations can proceed to the three-stage process involved with adoption of DASM tools: First, automate application provisioning. Many aspects of software development have already been optimized. There are tools that help us build better applications and tools to enhance testing. However, when it comes to delivering the application, organizations often have ad hoc means in place to do so. Every technology has its own model for packaging an application, which usually requires manual intervention by disparate individuals. The first step in automated service level management is standardizing these processes to reduce errors and speed time-to-market of new applications.