Oblicore Guarantee™ ESP

Improving the Visibility and Performance

of Enterprise Services
Organizations are making more business commitments in the form of service level agreements (SLAs), outsourcing contracts
and formalized business processes. Now more than ever, it is imperative to measure the performance of these commitments,
as non-compliance can significantly increase costs and reduce customer satisfaction.

Enterprises need much better visibility into their commitments, yet improving visibility is difficult. Measuring performance
entails gathering and aggregating disparate performance data from multiple siloed systems and correlating it to business
objectives. Although simple in principle, it is complex and time-consuming in practice. Organizations use spreadsheets,
reportwriters and IT monitoring tools. These are labor-intensive and expensive as they struggle to accurately relate disparate
data to business commitments. The result is "hindsight visibility" that is after-the-fact, imprecise and non-actionable.
Organizations are unaware that commitments are breached until too late. They do not know the root cause of issues or
their financial impact. If they could proactively monitor their commitments, they could dramatically reduce costs, improve
efficiency and increase customer satisfaction.

Oblicore Guarantee ESP for Enterprise Service Performance:

Oblicore Guarantee ESP is an industry leading application that automates Enterprise Service Performance (ESP): the
process of defining, measuring and acting on the performance of SLAs, outsourcing contracts and formal business processes.
It is called 'ESP' because it empowers executives and managers with 'extra sensory perception' into the key commitments
that drive their business.

Guarantee ESP automates the continuous monitoring,

management and reporting of these commitments. It Calculating Evaluating
uniquely integrates the disciplines of SLA management, Financial Proposed
IT performance monitoring and financial reporting. This Impact Commitments
integration automates the full lifecycle of service Service
deliverables, from creating a service catalog to evaluating Catalog
terms for proposed commitments, managing multiple Performance
versions, reporting/analyzing performance and Data
Reporting & Managing
understanding financial impact. The service catalog and
Analizing Multiple
performance data are the foundation for the application.
Service Levels Versions
The catalog acts as an enterprise repository of service,
business logic, time period and measurement definitions,
promoting the rapid creation, maintenance and Guarantee ESP automates the full lifecycle of service commitments.

standardization of service commitments.

Guarantee ESP differs from IT monitoring tools in that it uses a "top down" approach that starts from the business commitment
(such as a contract). It maps commitments to underlying business and IT systems by capturing three important facets:

• What service levels are promised

• Business logic that ties service levels to underlying systems and resources

• Service level date and time requirements

1
 Oblicore Guarantee™ ESP

SLAs, Contracts Reports, Alerts, Dashboards

Adapters
Network Business
Monitoring Applications Help Desk Proprietary
- HPOV - SAP - Remedy - Billing
- Netcool - Siebel - Peregrine - Others
- InfoVista - JDE - Clarify
- Tivoli - Others - Others
- Others

Guarantee ESP uses a top-down approach that starts from the SLA/contract
and that maps service objectives to underlying IT and business systems.

Once the service requirements are captured, Guarantee ESP’s flexible data adapters
"What is distinct in the Oblicore
aggregate performance data from underlying IT and business systems - - network
solution is a top-down, business-
management, helpdesk, ERP, mainframes and proprietary systems - - to calculate actual
oriented approach reflected in
and projected service levels. Working through the business logic, Guarantee ESP uses its real-time reporting, alerts and
a high performance correlation engine that continuously converts data into information, analyses."
comparing commitments to actual performance. By automating this process, organizations
can focus on improving service delivery instead of manual data aggregation, complex Rick Sturm, President,
calculations and time-consuming reporting. The application lets enterprises use resources Enterprise Management Associates
more efficiently, work smarter and accomplish more with less.

Guarantee ESP real-time dashboards and on-demand reporting improve visibility into service performance.

Guarantee ESP provides role-based dashboards for executives, management and operations staff that show whether key
business commitments are met. It automates performance reports to promote communication between service providers
and recipients. Real–time reporting enables delivery teams to understand, manage and improve service levels. If periodic
reports proving service are required, the application lets analysts schedule customer-specific reports for review and
distribution. Integrated OLAP makes it easy to drill down into the details of service delivery, revealing trends, identifying
problems, and helping managers understand performance levels.

2
 Oblicore Guarantee™ ESP

Because Guarantee ESP starts from capturing top-down business objectives, it can alert managers to what matters most
-†- existing or potential breaches of commitments. The real-time dashboards provide a high-level view of performance and
lets users drill down into areas of interest. When a problem is identified, the application helps analyze its root cause,
leading to quicker problem resolution and fewer service disruptions.

Guarantee ESP At-A-Glance

• Provides real-time visibility into the business impact of SLAs, outsourcing "Oblicore Guarantee alerts us before a
contracts and business processes service breach occurs so that we have
• Substantially reduces the cost and effort of reporting the opportunity to resolve problems
• Helps forecast commitment violations and analyze their root cause proactively rather than reactively. The
result is better service to our customers
• Calculates, reports and alerts to financial impact such as penalties
and more efficient management of our
• Manages a service catalog and multiple versions of commitments throughout
business."
their entire lifecycle
• Improves visibility to business and IT executives, management and customers -- Managing Operations Director,
• Deploys quickly and predictably for a rapid and compelling ROI $500M Telecom Services Provider
• Is ITIL compliant

Guarantee ESP For The Enterprise

"We selected Oblicore Guarantee
because we were impressed with the
product's flexibility in modeling our
sophisticated process and its ability to
capture and reveal the financial
implications of compliance or non-
compliance."
-- Director Service Delivery,
$5B Telecom Company
The application helps enterprises capture and manage service needs effectively,
clarifying and quantifying the relationship between delivery of business-critical
services and underlying IT systems. It spans insourced and outsourced services,
providing a comprehensive view of what has been promised versus what is
delivered. It enables contracts with service providers to be optimized while internal
users get the services they want. With Guarantee ESP, the enterprise can:
• Improve management of outsourcing and insourcing agreements
• Keep critical business processes in top shape
• Efficiently allocate service resources to internal business units

Metrics
Order Fulfillment
Successful Billing Cycle

24x7

Weekends

Off-peak

Business hours

Holidays
Pro
Da vis
ion
e r1 2 Sta
ta
Se ing
SLA/Contract om er He ffin r vi Service view
us
t m r3 lpd g ce
s Customer view
C sto me r4 Bil es
Cu sto me r5 lin
g k Timeslot view
Cu sto me Financial view
Cu s to
Cu Aggregate view

Performance Data
Collection,
Aggregation,
Calculation

The Guarantee ESP correlation engine transforms disparate IT and business data into service level visibility.

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 Oblicore Guarantee™ ESP

Guarantee ESP For The Service Provider

Service providers manage multiple contracts with customers. Guarantee ESP helps automate the process of creating,
managing and reporting on commitments and ensuring appropriate levels of service delivery. The application promotes
standardization of SLAs, while assisting simultaneously to meet all commitments. It automates the elaborate reporting
obligations that contracts carry, allowing service providers to shift skilled workers to higher-value tasks. By offering role-
based reporting access to customers, the application provides significant value to customers. With Guarantee ESP, service
providers can:

• Simultaneously manage multiple contracts over shared infrastructure

• Easily provide real-time and periodic reports
• Manage the financial aspects of SLA compliance
• Gain competitive advantageous by providing real-time performance visibility to customers

Scalable, High Performance Architecture and Rapid Deployment "Oblicore Guarantee allows us
Guarantee ESP is based on an N-tier web-based architecture with robust security and minute-by-minute comparison of
flexible deployment options to support highly demanding service level management our commitments to our
performance, allowing us to
needs. It has an extensive library of pre-built data adapters that interface to many
effectively and efficiently deliver
commercial applications. The application is often deployed within two to three months, on our commitments."
which is made possible due to its extensive "out-of-the-box" functionality and best -- CIO,
practices implementation methodology. $2B Network Services Provider

Guarantee ESP: Improving the Visibility and Performance of Enterprise Services

Guarantee ESP enhances customer satisfaction by reducing performance breaches and by documenting proof of service.
It reduces costs, by automating manual reporting, allowing service levels to be optimized and by preventing performance
penalties. It can increase business for service providers by providing a competitive advantage over rivals that cannot
provide real-time performance visibility to customers. It can generate incremental revenue by helping differentiate service
levels. As a web application that implements quickly, it helps organizations "Guarantee" that critical business commitments
are met, for a rapid ROI. For more information on how Guarantee ESP can improve the visibility and performance of your
enterprise services, please visit www.oblicore.com.

Guarantee ESP Major Features

• Robust SLA/contract management, allowing the definition and ongoing tracking of the impact of business-critical services in terms of their objectives,
business logic, time periods, performance metrics, penalties and relation to underlying IT resources
• Support for multiple service delivery environments, including SLAs/contracts with external and internal customers and suppliers, as well as operational
level agreements and underpinning contracts
• Integrated service catalog that is an enterprise repository for templates that standardize service definitions, metrics and reporting, and allows rapid
creation and maintenance of SLAs and outsourcing contracts
• Easy-to-use event-driven business rules, for capturing simple to complex requirements
• Life cycle versioning of contracts, from proposed to pending, active and archived
• Multiple views of commitments, by service, time periods and metrics
• Graphical timeslot editor, which makes it easy to specify time periods when services must be provided, and simplifies related reporting
• Support for service exceptions and corrections, late arriving data and other conditions that affect reporting
• Flexible, intelligent data adapters that gather performance data from IT systems and business applications, synchronously and asynchronously
• Correlation engine that continuously calculates actual and projected service levels and compares these to targets
• Extensive automated reporting, including an easy-to-use end user report wizard as well as production reporting
• Integrated OLAP for analysts and managers for detailed data analysis
• Role-based dashboards with traffic light indicators of service performance and context-based "smart" drilldowns
• Alerts for actual and projected service thresholds and penalties
• N-tier architecture for scalable and reliable performance
• Optimized SLA/contract data model that supports highly complex commitments as well as large volumes of data
• Robust application and data level security
• ITIL compliance: service catalog, templates, performance visibility and much more

World Headquarters European Headquarters

Oblicore, Inc.
9841 Brokenland Pkwy
Columbia, MD 21046
Copyright © 2004 Oblicore. All rights reserved. Oblicore and Guarantee
are trademarks of Oblicore, Inc. All other company and product names Telephone: +1 410 290 8701
mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Facsimile: +1 410 290 8720
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Telephone: +32 16 89 04 84
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