BizMap: A framework for mapping business applications to IT infrastructure

Abstract

Large enterprises are confronted with an increased need to fully understand the IT systems that support their business applications. Unfortunately, conventional communication trace-based approaches to discovering IT infrastructure dependencies are insufficient to gain a comprehensive mapping of business applications to IT infrastructure. This paper describes BizMap, a novel, information-discovery-based approach for deriving accurate business application topologies. BizMap uses a combination of information management, data analysis, and interactive visualization techniques to rapidly develop accurate topology models based on discovered information and configuration experts' insight. BizMap's evaluation is based on a comparison of the topologies created by BizMap's automated topology discovery with manually derived topologies with respect to performance and accuracy. It also includes a discussion of the user validation of the interactive BizMap steps.