According to ITIL, the objective of availability management is to ensure a defined and cost-efficient level of IT service availability. It is therefore of utmost importance to make sure that the requirements regarding the availability of an IT service and consequently that of the related business process are met. Because from a business perspective, it is not so much the availability of individual systems that counts, but the availability of an IT service.

In addition to its monitoring activities, one of the principal functions of availability management is to take the design measures necessary to reach the level of availability that is required. Ultimately, this entails a close integration with a company's service level management system. Availability management helps companies meet the availability requirements set forth in their customers' SLAs.

theGuard! Business Service Manager and theGuard! ServiceDesk, in combination with SLA management activities and the service tree feature, cover the entire spectrum of availability management. theGuard! Business Service Manager monitors IT infrastructures and applications on the basis of a highly automated and normalized CMDB. This allows companies to easily model, monitor, and optimize even their most complex business services. Different change and configuration workflows ensure a process-oriented operation. The service tree module gives administrators a horizontal as well as a vertical view of business services and provides visibility into every single performance indicator with just one click of the mouse.