Automating reviews and checkpoints

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: DENNIS DROGSETH ON NETWORK/SYSTEMS
MANAGEMENT
07/18/05
Today's focus: Automating reviews and checkpoints

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Management software can help with reviews required by best
  practices
* Links related to Network/Systems Management
* Featured reader resource
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Hewlett Packard
Special Report-Regulatory Compliance and the Role of Today's CIO

With a growing body of legislation dictating how enterprises may
create, use, share, and retain electronic records, CIOs must
develop data storage and management strategies that meet
regulatory compliance and support their organizations' overall
business goals. Fortunately, these objectives are not mutually
exclusive. Download this Special Report from Kahn Consulting,
click here
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=108664
_______________________________________________________________
NETWORK MANAGEMENT GOES OPEN SOURCE

Despite vendors' best efforts, the perception of network and
systems management products is that many are high-priced,
require lengthy deployment cycles, entail multiple integration
efforts and necessitate time-consuming customization. Click here
to find out about a new breed of products that just might solve
the NSM woes:
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_______________________________________________________________

Today's focus: Automating reviews and checkpoints

By Dennis Drogseth

One of the more sensitive and critical issues in following
best-practice guidelines is the issue of reviews and approvals.

In most best-practice recommendations, there are checkpoints
when formal reviews or approvals are indicated along with
implied or explicit recommendations for documentation and
sometimes even specific forms that need to be filled out. These
checkpoints are typically well-thought-out process or project
guidelines, and the approvals can often mean the difference
between consistent and well-governed efforts and random, ad-hoc
responses to problems and requests as they crop up.

However, formal, manual reviews take time and can seem to "slow
up the process." Sometimes, in fact, best practices can be
implemented so rigidly that they lengthen routine responses to
service and infrastructure performance problems.

There is no simple answer for this, except to say that all
best-practice initiatives should be viewed as journeys rather
than destinations. Their single greatest value is to stimulate
you to think more deeply about processes, requirements and team
interaction. Understand the recommendations and apply them
thoughtfully to you organization.

There is another approach to these "checkpoints," however. You
can balance the need for accountability and validation with the
need to be responsive and time-sensitive by buying management
products that embed validation and accountability in an
automated fashion, so that reviews can be provided in the way of
reports with clear visuals about actions taken, when they were
taken, where and why. In other words, the checkpoints become
automated actions within your management products, with or
without a human being passing judgment on them in real-time.

There is potentially risk associated here, but with the right
software for the right processes, operational savings - and
sometimes even gains in accuracy and effectiveness - can be
huge.

Here are places where software can help.

Examples in change and configuration management software include
AlterPoint, Emprisa, Intelliden, Network Clarity, Opsware and
Voyence on the network side and Altiris, BladeLogic,
Configuresoft, Ecora LANDesk and Opsware (TripWire) on the
systems side (BMC, Computer Associates and HP also have invested
in systems change management). These vendors' products are
designed to automate and standardize changes to the
infrastructure. They automatically generate audits and in some
cases automatically generate compliance reports. Most of these
have fairly sophisticated ways for embedding policies and
standards, so that any deviations are immediately made visible.
Minimizing and focusing human involvement should actually
minimize errors. Manual processes, even manual reviews, may be
moments of error in change and configuration management, as
different teams approach device configuration in support of
different application services and sometimes make conflicting
changes to the same device.

Performance and availability management - or real-time service
assurance ("Incident Management" in the IT Infrastructure
Library's processes) - is another area for advanced, highly
automated, dependable and time-sensitive management software.
This market is so vast that doing it justice would require at
least a feature-length article, and possibly a book. Suffice it
to say that trouble-ticketing systems lend themselves to formal
checkpoints, individual actions and reviews, but many of the
more advanced management products that do root-cause analysis,
application flow management, service-level management and
application acceleration provide levels of automation that
outpace traditional help desk approaches, sometimes with greater
accuracy.

There are also products designed to validate that a fix has been
made correctly. Enterprise Management Associates research has
documented what you probably already know: most IT organizations
function have lots of manual approaches and expert opinion with
little or no validation. (In many shops, validation that a fix
has been done correctly is when the phone stops ringing.) The
right mix of management software here can vastly improve these
processes if deployed well. Also, management technologies are
evolving to become more "deconstructable" in themselves - so you
can see exactly what was indicated, where, why and when and in
what context. This is essential if you're going to rely on
management software to automate and to some degree account for
processes and actions.

These are just examples of areas where "reviews/checkpoints" can
be maintained in sympathy with best-practice guidelines, but
partially or even largely automated through good management
technologies. Both are areas where time sensitivity is high and
where processes are routine and ongoing. Planning major
initiatives, whether for introducing a new application service
or doing data center consolidation, have a different scale and
time dependency.

In all cases, however, best-practice guidelines remain
invaluable and fundamental in clarifying and mapping out process
requirements. What changes is just how manual all "reviews"
remain. In the Internet era, when some services need to be
provisioned, delivered, assured, accounted for and terminated
within minutes, a balance between well-chosen technologies and
formal oversight provides a healthy recipe for success.

RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS

Investors target systems management
Network World, 07/18/05
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/071805-management.html?rl

Cisco covets anti-spam role
Network World, 07/18/05
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/071805-cisco-spam.html?rl
_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Dennis Drogseth

Dennis Drogseth is a vice president with Enterprise Management
Associates <http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/>, a leading
analyst, market research and IT consulting firm based in
Boulder, Colorado, focusing exclusively on all aspects of
enterprise management. Dennis has extensive experience in
service level management and network management platforms and
products. He is actively researching trends in management
software and changing IT roles internationally. His 22-plus
years of experience in high-tech includes positions at IBM and
Cabletron. He is widely quoted in the press and is a speaker at
many industry events. He can be reached via e-mail
<mailto:drogseth@enterprisemanagement.com>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Hewlett Packard
Special Report-Regulatory Compliance and the Role of Today's CIO

With a growing body of legislation dictating how enterprises may
create, use, share, and retain electronic records, CIOs must
develop data storage and management strategies that meet
regulatory compliance and support their organizations' overall
business goals. Fortunately, these objectives are not mutually
exclusive. Download this Special Report from Kahn Consulting,
click here
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=108663
_______________________________________________________________
ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the Network/Systems Management newsletter:
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/nsm/index.html

Management Research Center:
http://www.networkworld.com/topics/management.html
_______________________________________________________________
FEATURED READER RESOURCE
THE ROI OF VOIP

When it comes to VoIP, most network managers are satisfied that
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companies expect to reap? Check out NW's step-by-step guide on
how to determine the true cost and benefits of VoIP. Click here:
<http://www.networkworld.com/research/2005/071105-voip.html>
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