The new tools come out of 's WebSphere and Tivoli lines and are designed to work in a heterogeneous environment and across a range of IT services, including , networks and services in the .

The first tool is the WebSphere Operational Decision Management, which monitors business processes against business rules, automating governance, said Scott Hebner, vice president of market strategy at IBM.

As an example of how the tool could work, Hebner said that if inquiries about a certain product are rising, the system could alert IT to the need to devote more resources to the issue. "This is for the IT employees to be able to ensure that a process is running efficiently against whatever rules are defined," said Hebner.

Judith Hurwitz, an analyst at the Hurwitz Group, said that IT systems today are really "a combination of lots of different services," such as software or infrastructure as a service, as well as internal data centers.

Hurwitz said "it is very important to be able to analyze the quality of service," to make sure "you have a consistent level of service across that entire environment."