While many IT professionals know that a good reference architecture can improve business performance, many still aren't sure how to pick the right one. And more importantly, a section of these IT pros -- especially those in SMBs -- still don't know how the right reference architecture can speed up their crucial business processes. The best reference architectures can help IT pros deal with the constant demands to implement new workloads, expand existing ones, and keep the current. This IT Managers' Journal is designed to help IT professionals better understand the role the right reference architecture can play in their businesses -- and how they can get the most out of it. The systems profiled in this journal make it easy to meet the demands of the business, propel growth, and help your business gain a competitive edge. Download this IT Manager's Journal to learn more.

Today's fast-moving world makes DevOps essential for any business aspiring to be agile and lean in order to respond rapidly to changing customer and marketplace demands. This book helps you understand DevOps and how your organization can gain real business benefits from it. You'll also discover how a holistic view of DevOps that encompasses the entire software delivery life cycle - from ideation and the conception of new business capabilities to implementation in production - can bring competitive advantage in a continuous delivery world.

As the primary focus of IT moves from increasing IT productivity through virtualization and cloud computing to enhancing business productivity, the biggest challenge that businesses face in executing corporate strategy is focusing the right people and resources on strategic initiatives. A key element in enhancing business productivity is driving down costs, which can help free up the funds needed to make strategic investments. Businesses also need a means to more effectively orchestrate how IT interacts with business processes and critical application environments. The solution lies in using managed services. Read this paper to find out more on how companies gained significant and quantifiable benefits from using managed services.

As companies become more reliant on critical applications to manage business processes and to interact with their customers, the time to market for new solutions becomes a key factor for success for the business. Over half of the organizations in the study cited accelerating new application development and deployment as an operational objective for deploying IBM PureSystems solutions. IBM PureSystems family is a portfolio of expert integrated systems built from the ground up to deliver an optimized hardware and software platform. Integrated systems combine compute, storage, networking and management into factory pre-configured and pre-integrated solutions.

This white paper focuses on Edison's Competitive Management Cost Study (CMCS) methodology for IBM Storwize V7000 and EMC VNX5500. The results of Edison's research show that administering the IBM Storwize V7000 system using its management interface is 34 percent less time-consuming in weighted workday savings and 31 percent less complex than managing an EMC VNX5500 system using the Unisphere software interface.

IBM Application Lifecycle Management, powered by Jazz, delivers the IBM vision for a collaborative Application Lifecycle Management process. The IBM Application Lifecycle Management platform can now also be integrated with SAP Solution Manager to enhance quality throughout enterprise applications lifecycle for SAP and heterogeneous projects. Read this Technical White Paper to understand how SAP Solution Manager is integrated with IBM ALM to integrate SAP with heterogeneous applications.

This White Paper by IT industry analyst firm IDC highlights the business value of consolidating workloads on IBM System z and Linux, based on a variety of customer deployments.

In October 2011, IBM commissioned Forrester Consulting to examine the total economic impact and potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying IBM Rational tools and IBM professional Services to drive improvements in the application portfolio management (APM) process. The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of IBM tools and services on their organizations.

In years past IT managers were willing to be saddled with the dreaded vendor lock-in. They were willing to let their infrastructure and software choices be dictated by one or two vendors in the hope of better operation efficiency and support. Those days, however, are long gone. Most IT shops are platform and vendor neutral. But building a server architecture that can allow for true agnosticism is challenging. In this paper, learn five actionable ways your IT organization can leverage IBM's System X technology to build truly scalable and flexible data centers that can power any number of vendor systems and business processes and workloads.

By using IBM Operational Decision Management (IBM ODM) software for implementing decision logic, you can realize a major advancement in bridging the gap between business people and IT. The solution provides capabilities for the line-of-business to define policies in a form that is both understandable by the non-technical user and deployable to the systems that use them to automate decisions, facilitating clear communication between the policy managers defining the requirements and the developers implementing the business system solution.

Simplified graphical design tools-make it easier for every team member, including nontechnical users, to collaborate on process design and analysis. Download this whitepaper and learn how to: Increase efficiency, Increase collaboration and Visibility into process performance.

Most businesses see the value in CRM and ERP. When implemented properly, these platforms can enable better sales, more efficient marketing, and drive both top line and bottom line revenue growth. Getting there however, is a challenge. This IT Managers' Journal is designed to give IT managers and business leaders 10 steps that can help them transform CRM into a winning solution for revenue growth and business efficiency. Read this ITMJ and discover how IT and business management can work together to realize real, demonstrable ROI.