Comments for IT Management 2.0

Comment on It’s All About Foundation, Foundation, Foundation… by Phil Burt

Phil Burt — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:02:50 +0000

Great post Brian! It is amazing how expectations always seem to lead the ability to deliver. If IT is ever going to be able to meet the service expectations of its end-customers, it will need a different approach to managing the configuration and delivery of the infrastructure and a different approach to managing operations. Automation will be key to both.

Comment on Strong, Positive Thoughts About the Importance of NCCM by Tom Pisello

Tom Pisello — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:12:04 +0000

Good overview of how important Gartner perceives NCCM’s tangible value.

Want an idea on the value of EMC Ionix and driving better virtualization management? Alinean, a group of ex-Gartner TCO experts, developed the following calculator for EMC to assess the tangible benefits of Ionix, including NCCM.

Providing a little information about your current data center configuration, and management practices, the tool will
1) score and compare your current capability and maturity to your peers to highlight potential troublespots
2) calculate the value of EMC Ionix solutions and how it can drive savings, IT productivity improvements and drive better service levels

Try for yourself at:
https://roianalyst.alinean.com/emc/AutoLogin.do?d=96663974887422036

Comment on VCE Coalition and Ionix by ddementia

ddementia — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:18:22 +0000

So where is the collateral for this product? I don’t see any whitepapers, demo’s, product page, etc.
Or has the DCI product been renamed?

Comment on VCE Coalition and Ionix by Berkay

Berkay — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:21:34 +0000

Found some more info ..
http://www.emc.com/collateral/software/data-sheet/h6701-vce-ionix-unified-ds.pdf

Looks like currently it is for provisioning, configuration&change. Not clear whether there is any fault mgmt capabilities.

Comment on VCE Coalition and Ionix by Berkay

Berkay — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:55:47 +0000

Do you have any information on what “Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager” is other than the marketing gibrish from the press release?
- What does it do?
- Is it a new product or packaging of existing products?
- if new package, which existing Ionix products is it based on?
- Does it exist now or just announcement of intent? if it does not exist now, when will it?
- Is there any documentation?

I think for anyone to “think” anything, there should be more information than two sentences in a press release, no?

“Also today, EMC is introducing IonixTM Unified Infrastructure Manager as an integrated, unified element manager for Vblock. Unified management is a central factor in helping customers reduce operating expenses. As an element manager, Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager is designed to support a wide range of enterprise management consoles.”

Comment on Putting CMDBs On a Pedestal: In the Cloud by Jeff Abbott

Jeff Abbott — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:09:08 +0000

Great insight Roberth. This aligns well with the approach of Data Center Insight, where we focus on using the CMDB for the configuration information that relates to the infrastructure dependencies, and then leverage real time access to the discovery sources themselves for deep level configuration information of a particular domain.

Comment on Putting CMDBs On a Pedestal: In the Cloud by Roberth Edberg

Roberth Edberg — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:43:36 +0000

Hi Jeff,
I’ve been working with large scale (Global) it operations related problems for over 15 years now and with CMDB related questions about 7-8 years. I think the problem is that most involved think backwards when it comes to the CMDB and what to put in there.

The working methodlogy should be like this:

1) Empty CMDB.
2) Anything that only used or dependant of own responsabilities, its no need to put it into the CMDB.
3) If something is used or depending of other than your own responsabilities, the CMDB is the tool to relate the config needed in between.

Example:

I’m responsibl for a unixserver with a DB which is run by others that is used by others.

Manual
1) manually put the unixserver CI into the CMDB.
2) Manually put the DB CI into the CMDB
3) Relate the two togeather.

Discovery
4) Make a “DiscoverUnixserverService” CI, which you relate to the unixserver and a “DiscoverDBService” CI which you relate to the DB.
5) The discover tool is setup to query the CMDB for stuff to discover and find two CI’s. To be able to do the actual discover some information is needed. This information is stored in the relation-attributes between the Discoverservices CI’s and the Unix/DB CI’s. For example: IPAdr, DB user/passwd.
6) So what should the Discover tool discover and feed into the two CI’s attributelists? Of course ONLY that is needed by other Services. Example, we need a monitor that act as a user doing periodic client test against the DB. This test of course is a “MonitoringService CI” which maybe need the DB version, and more. The discover tool discover the attributes as they are also listed in the specific DB Discover Service to be discovered.

It take a while before one realizes that the discovery tool is the most critical part of the CMDB - AND how it’s own configuration MUST be handled within the CMDB. I’ve seen places were it take 6-7 years of failing CMDB projects. Most comes onto the correct track in thinking when they realize that it’s just like standard SOA mapping, and belive me… It takes time

Just a thought, you asked for it….

/Roberth

Comment on Five Ways to Keep ITIL Relevant and Save Money in a Tough Economy by Dina

Dina — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:22:19 +0000

Really interesting post. I think automation can probably make the biggest impact. Automate enough processes and you can’t help but make progress on some of your other suggestions. In regard to delivering actionable information, I completely agree that “automation can go a long way toward making the transformation from having data to delivering insight a reality.” Automation can also take care of some of the “low hanging fruit” you mentioned by just speeding up manual processes that can otherwise slow down Incident or Change Management and result in broken SLA’s.

Hope you don’t mind, but I shared this post with the Alert Management Network group on LinkedIn because a lot of the suggestions you make – automation, providing actionable info rather than data, consolidating systems – are actually the goals of an Alert Management platform. I think the group will find your insights really interesting. Thanks for the post!

Comment on The SECOND Happiest Place on Earth by Top 10 List: What is Cloud? - IT Management 2.0

Top 10 List: What is Cloud? - IT Management 2.0 — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 18:31:18 +0000

[...] is a Journey: As noted in a previous blog, this metaphor permeates the evolutionary nature of the cloud with the disconnecting of physical [...]

Comment on Is Anyone Solely Responsible for GRC? by Jeff Abbott

Jeff Abbott — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:39:11 +0000

So perhaps another question then is whether the best approach to GRC is tops down or bottoms up?

Ideally, it would be great if every company that recognized a need for management of governance, risk, and/or compliance had the time and resources to engage top level enterprise GRC consultants and adopt a GRC technology platform that would unify all the supporting control and measurement tools at the bottom.

But I suspect that most companies feel that they have open wounds that need to be patched in the short term before, or at least while, they consider a more hollistic approach.

It seems that both need to happen. Businesses need to choose the point tools now that will both stop the bleeding (from security vulnerabilities, failed audits, pnealties, inneficiencies, lack of measurability, etc.). The key is that they must choose wisely, and adopt tooles that support/integrate with more enterprise-wide GRC systems, where collected data can be used to inform decisions about how best manage the business from the top down.