The ongoing convergence of data and voice into next-generation networks provides a significant financial benefit through the reduction of capital expenditures.

Service providers and enterprises are now offering completely new types of services, making them more competitive and opening up new revenue streams. The key issue is the effective management of these complex service-oriented architectures.

Patricia Florissi, Chief Technology Officer of EMC's Resource Management Software Group, lends a perspective on the increased management complexity associated with delivering today's business services and the resulting need for an automated, model-based approach.

What is the difference between traditional rules-based methods – which are manual, resource intensive, and limited to managing discrete technology domains – and an automated, model-based methodology that places the burden of analysis back in the management tools?

This approach eliminates typically complex and manual efforts by automating the discovery of infrastructure elements and dependent applications, correlating behaviors across the technology domains, and automating event analysis to pinpoint root-cause behaviors in real time.

Importantly, this approach aligns the IT organization with the business objectives it supports by linking the behavior of a business infrastructure to the business services and customers served.

For more information on how companies can leverage EMC Smarts to increase service availability while aligning IT resources to critical business objectives read the white paper "Managing Next Generation Networks", or visit EMC Smarts.