1. IBM Customer Success
Computer Services Industry
Aspen Consulting offers comprehensive solutions
with Tivoli software from IBM
Aspen Consulting is a $20 million
information technology solution
provider serving the Chicago area and
beyond (www.aspenconsulting.com).
An IBM Premier Business Partner
since 1996, Aspen combines leading
hardware and software solutions from
IBM with proven implementation skills
and services to deliver customized
solutions for its customers.
Since its inception the company has
gained broad recognition for its
success and has been included
on such prominent lists as the Inc.
500 list of fastest-growing privately
held United States firms and
Computerworld’s top 100 companies
to watch.
Challenge: comprehensive
data management
According to Diane Arnold, director
of marketing for Aspen Consulting,
consolidation of storage resources,
centralized storage management and
disaster recovery preparation have
become essential in the minds of IT
executives. It’s a result, she says, of
the increasing risk of data loss, the
industrywide shortage of experienced
IT professionals and a critical need to
lower operating costs.
“Our clients don’t want to spread IT
personnel across a wide number of
offices,” explains Arnold. “They want
a few knowledgeable people who
can manage the company’s storage
resources from any location. They
want to be able to recover from a
disaster as quickly as possible and
even help avoid a data loss turning
into a business loss.”
“Tivoli software solutions
can integrate well
together and with IBM
hardware and software.
Looking at the future,
we know that we can
get a broad range of
integrated products
from IBM to help meet
customer needs.”
Diane Arnold
Director of Marketing
Aspen Consulting
This increasing demand for extensive,
centralized backup, recovery and
Overview
s Challenge
Expand offering to deliver
comprehensive data
management solutions
s Solution
IBM®
Tivoli®
storage
management solutions
s Results
Increased revenue through
repeat business and new
client acquisition
Completed 80 IBM Tivoli
Storage Manager deployments
in three years

2. 2
disaster preparation solutions helped
drive Aspen to transform its role from
systems integrator to comprehensive
data management solutions provider.
To make this transition Aspen needed
robust data management tools that
would help its customers pool storage
resources, implement solid disaster
recovery plans, and achieve business
continuance through effective data
and application protection solutions.
“We set our goal to deliver compre-
hensive data management solutions,”
says Arnold. “To achieve this we had
to help our customers obtain leading
technology and enable them to
effectively manage that technology.”
Solution: expanding with Tivoli software
To meet this goal Aspen expanded its
role as an IBM Business Partner and
began offering Tivoli storage manage-
ment solutions along with IBM server
and storage solutions. The company
also opened an IBM TotalStorage™
Solution Center at its facility in Illinois
to demonstrate integrated storage and
storage area network (SAN) solutions.
Aspen has numerous reasons why
Tivoli software represents an ideal
solution for its customers. First, Tivoli
storage management solutions
meet a full range of customers’
data protection requirements.
“IBM Tivoli Storage Manager is a
leading product in storage manage-
ment and that comes from a great
deal of research and development on
the part of IBM,” says Cara Kokenes,
a data solutions specialist with Aspen.
“It supports comprehensive data
backup and recovery efficiently, offers
extensive disaster planning and prepa-
ration capabilities, and helps enable
customers to manage storage from
multiple locations.”
In many installations Aspen recom-
mends Tivoli Storage Manager along
with Tivoli software for application
protection and disaster recovery.
Because of the necessity for hot
backups, an estimated 99 percent of
the company’s Tivoli Storage Manager
users also implement related Tivoli
Storage Manager application protection
modules, such as IBM Tivoli Storage
Manager for Databases or IBM Tivoli
Storage Manager for Mail.
Aspen has also found that Tivoli
SANergy™, which helps users share
access to common storage, volumes
and files transparently across SANs, is
a popular solution for large enterprises
that want to efficiently centralize
storage resources and provide users
fast access to data. Many demon-
strations the company provides at its
IBM TotalStorage Solution Center
include Tivoli SANergy.
Aspen ranks the quality of Tivoli soft-
ware very high. Customers find that
the software is virtually trouble-free
once implemented and performs as
advertised. As a testament to product
quality, Kokenes points out that almost
80 percent of FORTUNE 100 com-
panies use Tivoli Storage Manager.
“People in that caliber [of companies]
are very confident of the product,”
she says.
Finally, Aspen customers report that
Tivoli products are easy to use. Aspen’s
project planning and detailed design
help tailor Tivoli software to each
customer’s specific environment. The
company has found that the applica-
tion programming interfaces in Tivoli
Storage Manager make the product
easy to customize for each customer’s
environment. After product implemen-
tation, Aspen customers can run the
products themselves with little trouble.
“We have had positive feedback from
customers on the Tivoli products’
ease of use,” says Arnold. “Tivoli
software products are not difficult

3. 3
to learn. We’re here to support
customers should they need us, but
once we’ve completed the implemen-
tation, our customers are typically up
and running on their own.”
The autonomic self-managing features
of Tivoli software rapidly gain impor-
tance among customers. These
features enable Tivoli software to
dynamically adapt to change based on
business policy, helping companies
potentially reduce the time and cost
associated with technology man-
agement. For example, Tivoli Storage
Manager incorporates self-configuring
capabilities, such as automatic
domain configuration and file system
identification, that allow the software
to handle these mundane tasks
automatically so that IT administrators
can focus on business-critical issues.
Adds Kokenes, “Customers are asking
for autonomic features and are finding
Tivoli software offers great benefits in
this area.”
Results: increasing customer base and
repeat business
Participation in the IBM Business
Partner Program and delivery of Tivoli
software to its clients has yielded
Aspen increased revenues through
new customer acquisitions and repeat
business. The company estimates that
it has participated in more than 80
deployments of Tivoli Storage Manager
in the last three years, many due to
introductions from Tivoli sales repre-
sentatives. Because of the enormous
success with Tivoli representatives in
Chicago, Aspen has launched a
national campaign to promote its
services to many more Tivoli sales
representatives for large exposure.
“We have such a good success rate
with the local Tivoli sales team that
we’re now seeking to strengthen
our relationships with Tivoli repre-
sentatives across the United States
and Canada,” says Arnold. “We can
list numerous accounts that IBM
brought us.”
The IBM Business Partner Program
also works closely with Aspen sales
representatives on customer acquisition
activities. For example, the Tivoli
Business Partner Manager assigned
to work with Aspen has helped
identify potential customers to
approach. The two companies also
team on comarketing activities, such
as Tivoli Lunch and Learn seminars,
with Tivoli representatives helping
drive attendance or providing a
speaker. Aspen staff also leverage
Tivoli marketing collateral and enroll in
technical and sales classes through
the IBM Business Partner Program to
stay in tune with the latest Tivoli
software enhancements.
“Our IBM Business Partner Program
contacts support us through many
issues — from answering general
questions to participating in sales
calls,” says Kokenes.
The quality and feature-rich capa-
bilities of Tivoli software help Aspen
secure repeat business and deliver
concrete results. Case in point: a large
international law firm approached
Aspen several years ago seeking a
new data management solution. The
company’s legal staff — spread
among eight locations in the United
States and Europe — needed to
access and share documents and
e-mail messages virtually anytime
day or night. At the same time, the
company wanted to consolidate
storage devices, centralize storage
management from its headquarters,
and reduce related administrative
and technology costs.
In response to the law firm’s needs,
Aspen consultants designed a high-
availability disaster recovery solution
based on IBM hardware and Tivoli
storage management software,

4. including Tivoli Storage Manager,
Tivoli SANergy and IBM High
Availability Cluster Multi-Processing
for AIX®
(HACMP). This solution
streamlined user access to informa-
tion, improved data backup and
recovery, centralized storage manage-
ment and strengthened data
preservation. Data backups, which
previously could take days, were
reduced to just two hours. Network
users who once saw network
performance drop as much as 35
percent during backups no longer
experienced performance degradation.
The Tivoli Storage Manager disaster
recovery module also helped the
customer recover from site-specific
disasters, including damage its New
York office experienced during the
9/11 tragedy and flooding at one of its
Texas offices. As the law firm opens
new offices worldwide and expands
its IT infrastructure, it has called upon
Aspen consultants for continued
support integrating new sites into
its network.
“The client is confident that we can
address its data management
challenges quickly and efficiently,”
says Kokenes. “We know the firm’s
environment very well and, with IBM
solutions, we bring the right tools to
deliver measurable results.”
Future: integrated solutions from IBM
Aspen works with the IBM Business
Partner Program to provide customers
with implementation and integration
services for IBM Tivoli systems
management and IBM Tivoli security
management solutions. Its sales reps
and services consultants undergo
rigorous certification training on Tivoli
software to help clients customize the
software for their particular needs.
The company is also considering
reselling solutions from other IBM
software brands such as DB2®
, Lotus®
and WebSphere®
.
Integration has been the key word in
the company’s expansion. Explains
Arnold, “Tivoli software solutions can
integrate well together and with IBM
hardware and software. Looking at the
future, we know that we can get a broad
range of integrated products from IBM
to help meet customer needs.”
To learn more
For information about IBM Tivoli
Intelligent Management Solutions
and integrated solutions from IBM,
contact your IBM sales representative
or visit ibm.com/tivoli
Tivoli software from IBM
An integral part of the comprehensive
IBM e-business infrastructure solution,
Tivoli technology management software
helps traditional enterprises, emerging
e-businesses and Internet businesses
worldwide maximize their existing and
future technology investments. Backed
by world-class IBM services, support
and research, Tivoli software provides
a seamlessly integrated and flexible
e-business infrastructure management
solution that uses robust security to
connect employees, business partners
and customers.
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2003
IBM Corporation
Software Group
Route 100
Somers, NY 10589
U.S.A.
05-03
All Rights Reserved
AIX, DB2, the e-business logo, e-business on
demand, the e(logo)business on demand lockup,
~, IBM, the IBM logo, Lotus, NetView,
OS/390, SANergy, Tivoli, Tivoli Enterprise
Console, TotalStorage, WebSphere, xSeries,
z/OS and zSeries are trademarks or registered
trademarks of International Business Machines
Corporation in the United States, other countries
or both.
Rational is a registered trademark of Rational
Software Corporation in the United States, other
countries or both.
Other company, product and service names may
be the trademarks or service marks of others.
All performance data and results described in
this publication were obtained in a specific
environment, and are presented for purposes of
illustration only. The results obtained in other
environments may vary.
The information in this document concerning
non-IBM products and/or services was obtained
from the supplier(s) of those products and/or
services. IBM has not tested such products
and/or services and cannot confirm the accuracy
of the performance, compatibility or any other
claims related to non-IBM products and/or
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addressed to the supplier(s) of those products
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The Tivoli home page on the Internet can be
found at ibm.com/tivoli
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found at ibm.com
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