Another tool from IBM is Tivoli Analytics for Service Performance, which provides a consolidated view across an IT environment. Among the things it does is bring to IT infrastructure, a capability that is now widely used by businesses to compete in the market.

It uses historical trends to help identify when, for instance, there is a risk of service degradation because of the increased use of a particular system.

Hebner said the system uses that are deployed throughout the environment to gather data.

IBM has also updated the capabilities in its messaging brokering, IBM WebSphere Message Broker, so that these tools can share information.

Patrick Thibodeau covers cloud computing and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .