IBM meshes with Flexera to boost AIOps IT automation

IBM and IT management specialist Flexera are more closely integrating their respective tech to boost the use of AI and automation to modernize management of IT assets and operations within organizations.

The pair have built new integrations between the Turbonomic Application Resource Management (ARM) and Flexera One platforms. The goal is to allow IT admins to visualize their entire IT estate from on-premises to SaaS to cloud, and then automate manual tasks such as software licensing and resource optimization.

According to IBM, business leaders report that IT asset management has become an increasingly complex and time consuming task as organizations move to a multi-cloud strategy with applications and services spread across multiple platforms and on-premises environments. At the same time, there is an industry-wide shortage of skills – although this could pretty much be said at any time – which is driving the need for greater automation.

IBM acquired Turbonomic in 2021. Turbonomic ARM continuously monitors - and is intended to improve - application performance by dynamically resourcing applications across hybrid and multi-cloud environments to reduce costs, Big Blue said.

Integration with Flexera One provides access to its software license and utilization data, which is claimed to help businesses mitigate the risk of penalties from software non-compliance and avoid any unanticipated costs, from unwitting over-consumption of cloud resource, for example.

The integrated solution is designed to help organizations identify areas of under-utilization so they can reclaim costs and ensure their resources are being optimized for the best performance, according to IBM.

• IBM Cloudant pulls plan to fund new foundational layer for CouchDB
• The long-term strategy behind IBM's Red Hat purchase
• IBM investors staged 2021 revolt over exec pay
• IBM cannot kill this age-discrimination lawsuit linked to CEO

IBM said this integration with Flexera is the latest step in its AI-powered automation strategy, which is focused on providing customers with a one-throat-to-choke for solutions across business and IT automation. Flexera is already a part of IBM's partner network.

"IBM's collaboration with Flexera adds to our automation portfolio and complements our strategic acquisitions of Turbonomic and Instana, as well as years of AI research and development to provide organizations with a one-stop shop of IT and business automation capabilities designed to meet these complex challenges," said IBM's general manager for IBM Automation, Dinesh Nirmal in a cxanned statement.

An enhanced version of Flexera One is also being sold by IBM itself. The firm said it is launching Flexera One with IBM Observability, backed by IBM support and service level agreements, which will provide organizations with the ability to monitor and visualize their entire estate of software, applications, and infrastructure across cloud and on-premises environments.

Flexera One with IBM Observability will be available as a SaaS solution from March 18.

The tie-up means users can now have a single solution to manage software licenses from IBM and other vendors through the IT Asset Management feature of either Flexera One with IBM Observability or Flexera One from Flexera. ®