Bocada Enterprise TSM Power Suite: Powerful Decision Support.

• Tired of sorting through piles of cryptic TSM messages?
• Need one tool for visibility and management of TSM?
• Want to quickly see where your success and failures are in a TSM backup?

Register to see this Webcast today: http://www.bocada.com/register_Tiv oliTenWebinar.php

Learn more about the TUG Sponsorship program

NEW TUGs: Tivoli User Groups:

1. Brasil Tivoli Storage TUG
2. Maximo ITSM UG
3. Facilities Management Maximo User Group

Check out the TUG meetings: Plan to attend a scheduled 2007 TUG meeting near you today!

NEW, Executive Corner. Letter now available for reading! Get the inside scoop on what all the IBM acquisitions mean to you by reading the article by Laura Sanders, VP Tivoli Development on "Acquiring the technology you need – even quicker – to better manage the business of IT”. Read the article today!

NEW in 2007 – Educational sessions ranging from 2 to 8 hours will be offered at various local Tivoli user groups. More information will be forth coming in Q1 of 2007.

Spread the word! Encourage people in the industry to Join the Tivoli User Group website as membership is FREE. Be the 150th or 300th person to join the TUG website every month, and win a FREE MP3 Player!

Are you a current member of the TUG community? Look for new avenues for you to participate.

Willing to lead a Tivoli User Group? Many user groups are looking for customers to help lead their user groups. Please email gtugcouncil@tivoli-ug.org for more information.

Attention ITM Users!- Special Offer for QuickReporter for ITM from TUG website Sponsor Primeur
As a Registered TUG Member you qualify for a 15% discount. Click here and request a free Evaluation copy telling us you heard through the TUG.

Take 5 minutes to fill out the TUG Member Survey about On-line Education!

New Products!
IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway
TFIM provides an entry level solution for collaborating with customers, partners, agents and/or suppliers using Federated Single Sign-On and open standards. The product provides customers having narrow federation needs a small footprint solution. The datasheet and website are in process and will be posted shortly!

IBM Tivoli Capacity Process Manager
Tivoli Capacity Process Manager provides assistance in managing and monitoring the capacity of IT infrastructure resources. It also provides a fully customizeable capacity workflow to ensure activities are completed in the proper sequence.

New Collateral!
IBM Tivoli Identity Manager Express - Buyer's Guide

Introducing IBM TechTube. Tune in.
Introducing a convergence in rich media. IBM TechTube is your one-stop IBM media portal. Video. Audio. Demos. Events. And a lot more. On demand.

• Experience the easiest, fastest and most interactive way to access media about the technology topics that matter to you – right now.
• Easily browse content by, business need, media type or hot topic (such as SOA or Information Management) to find exactly what you need when you need it.
• Experience events on demand. Replay media portions of events you attended to get a quick recap, or get the recap on those you missed – all in one place.

Eurekify, presents a quick and effective approach to plan and prepare for Identity Management projects.
Eurekify, the pioneer and leading developer of role- based privileges management solutions, now offers a use (e.g. project) of its advanced pattern recognition technology to help organizations quickly identify and quantify their own Identity Management (IdM) needs, and to prepare and plan IdM deployment projects. To learn more view the recorded webinar with Gartner's Roberta Witty, visit http://www.eurekify.com/news/0611 21.asp

Tivoli Continuous Data Protection - Ever want to use Tivoli at home? TUG community members can now buy this recently announced product in one simple step while benefiting the TUG website community. A portion of the sales goes right back into the TUG website for continued enhancements. Click here to find out more.

HINTS and TIPS

IBM Software Support Toolbar - Now available for Firefox and IE7, with Tivoli content enhancements

The IBM Software Support Toolbar. With this tool, you have a quick and easy way to find highly requested software support pages in just a click or two. Adding the ability to search IBM's multiple resources, even narrowing that search down to a specific Brand/content.

For Tivoli users, you now have toolbar access in the Tivoli options, under 'More Resources' for OPAL, Technical Exchange Webcasts, IBM Education Assistant, Product Training, Certification, User Group community site and problem support escalation contacts.

You can install from: http://www- 306.ibm.com/software/support/toolbar/index.html? ibmsst=ibmTbMenu

Increase IT productivity with technically validated extensions available on-line via OPAL
The IBM Tivoli Open Process Automation Library (OPAL) is a comprehensive on-line catalog that includes more than 300 technically validated extensions developed by IBM Tivoli Business Partners and IBM. OPAL includes services and downloadable system integrations, automation packages, integration adapters, agents and configuration files.

For more News please book mark our TUG News page

Conferences/In- person events/Meetings
Mark your calendars: Tivoli Technical User Conference 2007

• May 7-10 at the Hilton Hotel in San Francisco, California
• June 11-14 at the Marriott Hotel in Rome, Italy

Education

Save Twice with an IBM Education Pack – Online Account Get 10% off and up to $5,000 in bonus training dollars.
You can save not once but twice with our special limited time offer. When you purchase $25,000 of training to open an IBM Education Pack – online account, save 10% and pay only $22,500. Save a second time when you receive an extra $2,000 in bonus dollars posted to your account right away. That’s $27,000 worth of training for just $22,500! And when you purchase $50,000 of training in your online account, you pay only $45,000, plus you will receive $5,000 in bonus training dollars for an account value of $55,000. That’s a total of $10,000 worth of training—free!

Don’t miss your chance to Save Twice - now through 16 February 2007.

Learn more about this limited time offer.

Free IBM Tivoli Training
Did you know that IBM Tivoli Training offers free training every month? Did you know that you only have to visit one web page to find a list of all the training that is currently free? The list is sorted by product and currently lists over 70 free Web Based Training courses, Differences courses and Web Seminars.

For details on IBM Tivoli Training that is currently free go to: http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/ education/edu_prd_free.html

Check the above link and this web page at least once each month for special offers.

Free IBM Tivoli Training Roadmaps
Not sure which Tivoli course you should take? What about prerequisites or product certification? You need a Skills Roadmap.

IBM Tivoli Training has individual Skills Roadmaps available for a majority of our products. The roadmaps list the prerequisite requirements, classroom courses, Web Based Training courses, certification information and other education (white papers, RedBooks, etc) available for each product. The Roadmaps detail the recommended training path for a variety of job roles.

The Skills Roadmaps are in PDF format and can be downloaded individually or combined in a single compressed file.

IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center 3.1
This 5 day instructor led course is designed for system administrators who are responsible for all aspects of storage management in a SAN environment. The course is comprised of over 50% hands-on and more than seventy lab exercises. Each student is assigned a unique server to gain hands-on experience administering the entire IBM Tivoli TotalStorage Productivity Center suite - Data Manager, Disk Manager, and Fabric Manager - and integrating these components into their storage solution.

Check out this link for more details and/or to register for this class.

IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager 6.1 Deployment and Administration
In this 4 day instructor led 50% hands-on course, students will learn to deploy and administer secure business-to-business and single sign-on federated environments. Course topics include planning, architecture, installation, configuration, and troubleshooting IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager and the single sign-on and Web single sign- on components.

Check out this link for more details and/or to register for this class.

IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business 6.0 Customization
This 4 day instructor led course provides students advanced Tivoli Access Manager for e-business customization experience. In this 50% hands-on course, students will customize the external authentication interface, tune Tivoli Access Manager for improved performance, and integrate Tivoli Access Manager into a J2EE application framework.

Check out this link for more details and/or to register for this class.

IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business 6.0 Web Based Training Series
This series of four Web-based courses is equivalent to the IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business 6.0 Deployment and Administration instructor led course. They cover deployment and administration of the base product, WebSEAL (the resource manager), and CARS.

These courses are targeted for System Administrators, Security Architects, Application Programmers, and Identity Developers who are responsible for maintaining users, groups, and access to protected resources.

IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business 6.0 Overview (2 hrs) FREE!
IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business 6.0 Installation (4 hrs)
IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business 6.0 Managing Users and Access Control (4hrs with labs)
IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business 6.0 WebSEAL (4hrs with labs)

Check out this link for more details and/or to register for these courses.

For the most up-to-date Tivoli event related information please book mark this page: http://www.tivoli- ug.org/events.php

IBM has recently acquired two companies that will affect the Tivoli product portfolio: Consul and Vallent.

Consul
As you may have heard, IBM is in the process of acquiring Consul's software product, sometimes marketed as "auditor in a box," is a compliance program that helps enterprise clients monitor and report questionable behavior among members of their IT administrations and intranets. You can have a fortress-like security system, but if you are not terribly discriminating with consultants and temporary employees, that is a terrible vulnerability.

While companies are gaining more confidence they can deal with pushing attacks by constantly warning customers of the dangers, they are now getting increasingly concerned about the physical theft of confidential client data by insiders or impostors. Identity theft can happen through hacking into a system or internally with someone walking out of the door, and that worries companies more than phishing. IBM is planning to incorporate Consul as part of their security portfolio to address hose problems described above. More detail analysis to come after acquisition is complete by first quarter 2007.

Vallent
Similarly, IBM announced the acquisition of Vallent software. Vallent is a leading supplier of network performance monitoring and service management software for wireless service providers. Vallent’s software helps service providers manage the performance of their network infrastructure through monitoring and reporting problem areas such as dropped calls and traffic bottlenecks. It also helps operators improve wireless service quality and identify network problems before they impact a customer’s experience. IBM will add Vallent to IBM Tivoli Software’s Netcool portfolio to create a broad set of service assurance capabilities spanning fault, network performance and service quality management. More information to come after completion of the acquisition.

Today organization’s face increased regulatory pressures resulting in higher operational costs. Security (along with other areas such as service management) plays a part in adding value to the business and presenting opportunities to reduce those costs whilst streamlining historical process.

The implementation of a centralized identity management architecture/infrastructure enables:

• A business to meet its obligations associated with who has access to their systems.
• Effective removal of access once people have left the organization.
• The improvement of the staff on boarding experience.

Due to previous failures in this space, if you are willing to tackle an identify management solution, identify your ‘quick wins’ up front. When I chose to undertake an implementation, password synchronization was chosen across numerous solutions located on mainframes, midrange and distributed server environments. This was linked to the corporate Intranet site that enables people to reset their password from an easily accessible location.

Why did I choose password resets? An average business user started their day with logging onto 8-9 systems with different passwords which meant a lot of time wasted and a large volume of help desk calls. By focusing on this functionality, it dramatically reduced the number of Help Desk calls but also provided a view of accounts by employee and system which satisfied regulatory requirements. A process was then put in place where each business unit/system owner was able to validate access and the appropriate level. Previously this exercise took over a year to complete per system, whilst some systems where not tackled for two years due to the complexity of the task.

How do you make it a success? – there are a number of activities required but my advice is to focus on the following:

• Work out a strategy first. This will ensure that everyone is moving in the same direction.
• Work out your processes or at least understand the impacts you will create through automation.
• Do data cleansing first on your systems to ensure consistency.
• Remove old or non-used accounts.
• Ensure that every account has a unique identifier – no names.
• To maximize use the same vendor for web based systems as well as internal facing.
• Have the DBA’s involved for tuning, support and normalization of data.
• Think of your LDAP repository as a data base. Don’t think of it as just information.
• Make it resilient. If the system fails, access will be a problem. The sales guys don’t tell you that.
• Start small, create a base and then progress from there.