HP released an updated to its Business Service Management (BSM) suite that promises to diagnose problems before they can impact business performance.

BSM software allows IT departments to gauge not only the technical performance of a service, but also its importance to employee productivity and customer service. Knowing a system's impact then lets departments prioritise upgrades and repairs.

HP claims that the new BSM offerings will allow businesses to not only prioritise IT elements, but also pick out potential problems before they affect end users.

The company points to an IDC study which found that 41 per cent of IT professionals had not been aware of network issues until they were reported by end-users. This, said HP, is getting IT staff in hot water.

"You're using end-users to do your network monitoring, and a lot of CIOs are coming down on their staff," explained Ramin Sayar, senior director of products for HP's Business Technology Optimisation (BTO) branch.

Sayar told vnunet.com that the new software for the first time offers an 'end-to-end' picture of the entire IT organisation. This makes it possible to fully understand how different components impact users and pinpoint problems before they affect end users.

HP credits many of the new capabilities that comprise the 'end-to-end' BSM system to its recent acquisition of Mercury Interactive. HP purchased the troubled company for $4.5bn late last year and meshed its products with HP's own to create the BTO program.

"There was very little overlap between the HP and Mercury portfolios, so by bringing these two together we were able to combine top-down and bottom-up solutions," Sayar explained.

Sayar said that the beefed up CSM offering is now altering the way in which HP pitches its BTO products.

"In the previous strategy, our software was used to sell more hardware," he said.

"Now, the opposite is true."