ORSYP

Isolating Productivity and Identifying Wasted Time in ITOM – Part 2

Following on last week’s exploration of best practices and tips for application integration in the datacenter, this week we’ll talk about how IT Operations Managers can identify tanks of productivity in the datacenter, helping to secure Service Level Agreements are met.

Phase 3:  Identifying Productivity Tanks

In the face of an IT environment that is becoming increasingly complex and heterogeneous, with layers of both new and historical technologies throughout, the mission of IT Operations is following suit. Tack on formalized Service Level Agreements with business stakeholders and cost pressure on all departments of an organization, and IT Operations Managers need to indentify productivity tanks and use simple pragmatic practices to save time in their daily work.

Here are some simple tips for saving time:

• Implement tools which help you detect abnormal behavior in real time with no massive central computation, enabling you to react immediately and limit consequences of an error.
• Become efficient at troubleshooting and accessing the right data with drill-down features, enabling resolution acceleration in case of error.
• Implement tools which enable reporting for trend analysis to help isolate problems in the mass of information, indentify computing trends based on historical data, and spot future issues and engaging proactively actions to avoid errors
• Ensure IT operations are up and running before a change is performed and minimize the time it takes to implement these changes as much as possible.  Do not generate false errors when change is made and order a restart of operations as soon as change is completed. Making sure change and run are synchronized drastically improves productivity.
• Consider performance a key characteristic of all IT Operations tools and practices.  The simple introduction of these tools will not impact performance of an application unless an IT practices as a whole share these characteristics.
• Focus time spent on projects which address the needs of the business, reducing the time spent on administrative tasks like compatibility or automatic updates.
• Ensure any technology supporting IT Operations is “plug-and-play” with standard technologies and platforms (i.e. supports virtualization; works over http, https, or Java; easily integrated with standard business applications like SAP and Oracle Applications).
• Make certain that tools and practices supporting IT Operations are easily adopted by all IT Operations stakeholders.  From 24x7 operators to system engineers and DBAs, an intuitive graphic user interface that requires little or no training is a must.

These simple tricks for ITOM can lead to massive gains in time. Identifying productivity tanks and practices for business process acceleration has become a virtuous and permanent game in IT Operations Management.

-- Jean-Michel Breul

Isolating Productivity and Wasted Time in ITOM – Part 1

IT Operations Managers continuously search for ways to free up time and resources in the management of the datacenter while still delivering quality service – this can prove extremely challenging. By combining efficient tools for IT Operations Management (ITOM) – in automation, monitoring, troubleshooting, performance, trend analysis, capacity management, etc. – with simple best practices, these managers can easily improve productivity and minimize wasted time.  Isolating these so-called “tanks” of productivity and wasted time can help secure Service Level Agreements are met and ensure better quality.

This week and next, we’ll take a look at the life cycle for application integration in the datacenter and identify best practices for IT Operations Managers in search of these productivity tanks.

Phase 1:  Proper Design

All successful IT projects begin with the proper planning and design. Just like any other design phase in IT, when integrating a new ITOM application into the datacenter, certain steps can be accelerated if best practices are in place. This list of simple characteristics can save the IT Operations Manager time and effort, avoiding failed integration.  When evaluating ITOM applications, keep an eye out for:

1. An easy-to-use, graphic enhanced, user interface can enhance user productivity.
2. The same platform or technology for all applications, whatever it may be, to avoid entering into knowledge acquisition for each project.
3. Define once and reuse many, so no time is wasted for identical or similar integration
4. An open solution with APIs and commands so that the tool is configured to fit with the application and not the opposite, which could lead to refocus on the design of the application itself and jeopardize its time to market.
5. The logical addressing and support of development/test/product environments so that minimal changes in configuration are made when rolling-out in production.
6. The automated reporting and documentation of the design phase for steering purpose with management and with other teams.
7. Packing configuration objects for IT Operations tools by application so that roll-out in production is a one-click operation and so that packages can be used by the same deployment process as the application itself using provisioning tools

All of these quick checks lead to agility, reduced time, proposed standardization and improved quality in these very specific stages of a project for an application before entering into live production environments.

  

Phase 2:  Complete Integration

Each new application about to enter (or re-enter, if an update of an application) a production datacenter needs the proper integration. This critical step helps ensure that all ITOM tools are prepared to assist in that application’s management during production. These tools could include monitoring and supervision, batch automation, backup, or DRP tools.

Once you’ve integrated a new application successfully, you can begin to identify tanks of productivity and capitalize on them.  Next week, we’ll discuss how to begin this phase of the application life cycle.

-- Jean-Michel Breul