Visual representation of a service

Having delivered the infrastructure for a number of new services I can't help thinking that each would benefit with some sort of visual representation of the entire service that shows the status of the various servers, JVM's, links, data sources, connections, etc. Years ago I delivered a HP OpenView solution so I know tools exist to provide command centres with something similar but they tend to provide a very wide view of active infrastructure and other tools such as WILY and App-Dynamics don't appear to provide the desired visualization. If anyone is familiar with the enormous walls of lights and dials used by power stations or transport networks (a mash up of the two would be good) that clearly indicate the status of key elements, if this could be reduced down to a single active screen providing something similar to a service map but with red/amber/green indicators. Why is this necessary? Certainly, in the interests of obtaining an instant view of active servers/connections for a complex service, particularly during the build phase or the first few weeks after a go-live to gain much needed confidence, and to allow rapid re-starts or reboots. It would also reduce the number of calls to both the infrastructure PM and the tech teams involved. Large screens have appeared through the office in recent years so suitable displays could be established for a project office to provide all concerned with a real time view of the key elements. An active 3d Visio type diagram would be spot on here showing host names, IP addresses and port numbers with animated connection lines between servers and, say, databases, smtp mails servers, logging servers, etc.

And finally this could be used by service managers and command centres to assist in early notification of issues and outages. Has anyone seen any tools that offer this or is this just a personal 'nice to have'??