In today’s cloud-filled world, the conversation around operations management is – as it should be – all about service assurance.

Can IT deliver the server, storage, networking, and application resources necessary to meet business needs?

The focus on service assurance isn’t really a new concept – it’s been talked about since the transition from mainframe to client server architectures. But how it is talked about has significantly changed over time, reflecting the reality of datacenter evolution. Because of the emergence of virtualization, cloud, and converged infrastructure, how your organization talks about delivering operational excellence demands a new conversation.

But what shape should that conversation take?  Well, let’s start by looking at a few things that have been said in the past.

Enterprise nirvana

At the beginning of the 1990s, monolithic systems management frameworks from IBM, HP, and CA were the loudest voices in the room when it came to …