Adventures of a Technical MasterMind

My bladelogic POC got shot down due to people being too busy. When are people going to realize by leveraging tools it will save them time. By not biting the bullet you are just going to be scrambling to stay on top of things. I am also looking at the following: RBA : Opalis and Iconclude (very cool software packages) Config Mgmt : Bladelogic Log parsing and management : loglogic and splunk (leaning towards splunk) I am integrating the following: I3 and Netcool for SNMP traps.

The class of tools which are known as predictive and analytical monitoring tools is a very interesting concept. I am looking at 2 such vendors now, to try to find something which can sit inline with our Netcool (manager of managers) and produce more intelligent alarms and such. If its works well, it may even replace or be the go to middle man to get to Netcool. Good idea to have not only the ability to predict, but to correlate systems based on what alarms together, and how they behave leading up to a failure. We are looking at : Intergrien Alive - http://www.integrien.com/alive.cfm Proactivenet - http://www.proactivenet.com/ Proactivenet is already in a QA lab here at another part of my company, but its not in production yet. We shall see how and if the POCs progress. Expect me to keep you guys posted.

As a result of attending the forum it just strengthened the fact that we need to have a core company who provides us with all of the technology that makes up the core CMDB and ITSM strategy. This include change management, ticketing, monitoring (as a whole). The integration needed between these items is not only important, but vital to having a closed loop process of implementing changes in a non-disruptive way. Other tools which strengthen monitoring, infrastructure management, application dependencies, and other areas can easily be integrated and further solidify the core of the service delivery of the IT group. The only area I am on the fence about is asset management, where something like Radia or even Bladelogic ensures compliance and proper change execution moves it outside of a traditional asset management system into part of the change verification arena. My firm has been buying tools from HP, but has not adopted them across the ticketing, change management, and CMDB areas. ...

I have been in Miami at HP Software forum this week learning some good stuff I will be sharing with you guys this weekend. automated fault correction nlayers and where its heading hopefully (how I feel about them in general) CMDB HP's overall vision around ITSM I will be discussing the competition to HP and how they are stacking up. More soon...

We currently use a small companies ticketing system for our IT service desk operations. I will leave the vendor's name out, because the product is not cutting it for many reasons. It can't scale, it doesn't have an open architecture, and its a poor all around product in the area of reporting and integration. We have an old change tracking system, which is quite good (especially for its age), but its developed internally, and it doesn't have the proper functionality that we need. I feel that in order to properly implement a full blown CMDB solution that it needs to be integrated fully with change management and ticketing systems. The only vendor I feel that can properly give you that infrastructure is HP. I'm going to be spending a lot of time to understand how their products work together to provide that. If anyone has comments on some other comprehensive and enterprise class companies with that kind of offering I am interested to know about it.

I will be attending HP software forum. It looks to be a very interesting show. I need to really accelerate my knowledge of their product line, and this is probably the best way to do it. If anyone is going let me know (in comments).

I accepted a new position at my company. I'll be the Director of Enterprise Architecture. What that means is that I will provide vision, analysis, and evangelism for the groups that cover monitoring tools (IP, systems, network, dashboarding, rollup, soa, etc), CMDB, change management, ticketing, and level 1 support. This includes the current state and forwarding thinking ideas around how to structure out tools and integration. I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking over the last 2 weeks. I will be posting more as I get my thoughts in better order.