Beteo Blog

Author: bea4x

  • ITIL, PRINCE2, PMI – Just Paper Tigers?

    Historically developed IT structure
    Within their IT organizations, enterprises historically distinguish between project business, IT operations and IT development. In addition to these separate areas, there are several processes and systems for project requests, notification of incidents and problem management.

    ITIL, PRINCE2 and PMI are Used Separately within their Silos?
    For these processes, there are standards such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), PRINCE2 and the PMBOK of Project Management Institute (PMI). But the project management office (PMO) and the change advisory board (CAB) execute their requests and analyses separately. This way of thinking in separate categories creates redundancies and ignores the synergistic potential. Interdependencies and influencing factors are neglected.  IT Service Management Forum (ITSMF) states:

    „Change management is responsible for the control of changes within the productive environment. It is not responsible for changes within running projects. However, a close coordination between development project managers and the change manager is expected.“

    From a project perspective, PRINCE2 and PMI require that operation must be included into planning. But the prioritization process in classical project portfolio management only covers project requests. Also change requests are only managed for projects. Neither of the two seems to be responsible. However, regarding them in isolation from one annother is a barrier to a holistic handling which enables a provisioning of IT services conforming with strategy.

    An Isolating View has Negative Effects
    There is no basis on which decision makers could define an order of priority for the activities between project business and IT operations. Although IT service management (ITSM) as well as project portfolio management (PPM) are already implemented and operated with a good process maturity level, the list of problems is long. Typical examples are:

    • Repeated processing of the same objects
    • Intransparent dependencies create higher risks
    • Troubleshooting and project implementation are delayed
    • Inaccurate planning due to lack of information
    • Critical resources can not be optimally used
    • Service level agreements (SLA) are defined only selectively
    • Changes cannot be tested comprehensively

    Comprehensive Service Portfolio Management is Desirable

    • Would it be helpful to view and evaluate all requests and requirements?
    • Could harmonizing the individual release processes (CAB und PMO) facilitate IT control?
    • Would pooling of problems and projects increase efficiency?
    • Could a holistic resource and schedule planning help to reach overall enterprise goals more efficiently?
    • Would a comprehensive view on risks help to avoid failures of IT operations?

    The Solution: Problem Portfolio as Part of Service Portfolio
    For these requirements, there are no established standards. The following method of procedure helps to clearly improve the efficiency of IT organziations:

    1. Establishing a problem portfolio

    • Situation analysis of incident, problem and change management
    • Definition of requirements for an overall problem management handling
    • Definition of an integrative problem management process
    • Harmonizing with incident  and change management
    • Establishing a problem portfolio as a control instrument

    2. Expanding and integrating service portfolio management

    Summary
    ITIL, PRINCE2 and PMI are highly useful frameworks capable of laying the foundation of an IT organization. But in order to challenge the „silo mentality“ and to take adequate advantage of them, they must be integrated with one another forming a holistic service portfolio & project management. Otherwise, they will be nothing but paper tigers.

  • Hungry for Change

    How hungry are you for change? – Clearly, ‘change’ is in itself not a serious management approach. Without content and its implementation change remains an empty talk. Successful executives connect therefore contentful imagination with execution. In the recent study “Enterprise of the Future” by IBM (www.ibm.com/enterpriseofthefuture) executive officers, selected all over the world, tell about theirs imaginations of the company in the future.

    • Markets will be actively designed. Innovations are beyond the wishes and needs of customers.
    • The company is globally integrated, inserted into the global economic exchange relations.
    • The inner engine is the transformation of business models, with new partners, customers, with modified performance processes realize new value-added potentials.
    • And companies assume more responsibility for their contributions to the visual world society “Corporate Social Responsibility” as environmental, financial and social sustainability.

    This brings people in the focus, their will and theirs skills to change themselves and others, who take part in the change:

    • “Hungry for change” has therefore the first place in the study. Who led and managed changes in the past successfully, dares to do quite so in future. “The key for successful transformation is the change of mind.” Or as my colleague Hans Rudolf Jost apt to say “Corporate Mind Change”. The desire for change is part of the change itself, courage for improvement potentials and new to exercise. It is about a culture of change: Tomorrow successful companies have already incorporated change, being even an actor of change in the world.

    That makes at least appetite, right?

    About the author:
    Dr. Michael Loebbert is Coach and Management Consultant and author of the montly publication “Change Management Short Cut“.

  • Is Tool-Supported Test Management Profitable?

    Every software project targets at providing high-quality software within the frame of a cost and time schedule. tool-based IT test management usually accompanies the whole software development process and partly adds to reaching this goal. This includes tasks like requirements management, test planning, test design, test execution, test evaluation as well as a superordinate defects management.

    Practical experience
    However, erratic and unsystemantic testing is general practice in many enterprises. A variety of manual steps, redundancies and inconsistent documentations are the order of the day, resulting in additional costs. On the other hand, high benefit could be achieved by use of a tool-based test management. Introducing the necessary test management tools, along with the suitable methods and processes, improves both the testing process and the software quality. The  benefit  provided for both the test organization and the IT projects can be summarized as follows:

    Testing gets

    • standardized (tool instead of free-text in Word/Excel), more systematic, more reliable,
    • less time-consuming, easier to execute,
    • verifiable (content and coverage), more effective and comprehensive,
    • traceable,
    • reusable, trainable,
    • it can be automated
    • and planned.

    Using test management methods and tools facilitates error recovery and consistently reduces error occurrence. Time and costs for testing and support are enormously reduced as well. This results in a reduction of total costs, higher quality, transpareny, improved system requirements and completion on schedule, if not ahead of schedule. Operation will be less error-prone with reduced breakdown frequency, leading to highest-possible customer satisfaction.

    The benefit is evident. The earlier an error is detected, the easier its recovery. But often, there is no time for testing, the project is behind schedule and people are under time pressure. Testing is considered a necessary evil. But tool-based test management is more than just a cost factor. If used in the right way, test management is a value-adding process.

    Potential return of tool-based test management
    Potential improvements are not easy to quantify. However, experience from successful implementations of the test management tool HP Quality Center has shown that real improvement is possible:

    • Improved product quality leading to
      • Less delay caused by bad product quality
      • Avoiding frequent emergency implementations during production
      • Higher customer satisfaction by meeting expected delivery requirements
      • Cost savings by less re-working and reduced support costs
    • Improved testing process leading to
      • Lower costs per test cycle by standardization and reuse
      • Standardization of planning, documentation and execution of tests
      • Less time and cost effort for preparation thanks to reuse of requirements, testing data and test cases
      • Fast test execution by automated regression testing
    • Improved use of test resources leading to
      • Savings by centralized use of HP Quality Center (hardware, software, support, services)
      • Automated test coverage management avoids the need for retesting or performing unneeded testing
    • Improved project delivery leading to
      • More predictable and optimizated delivery schedule
      • Test automation, less time needed for execution, reduced use of resources
      • Optimized use of project resources, e.g. by higher performance, better prioritization
      • Test resources are earlier made available to new projects (by on schedule delivery)
      • Comparable results allowing to continously improve test processes

    The aspects of potential benefit listed above can be used as a basis for profit calculation. By applying a scoping approach to the project, the relevant data and facts can be derived from above general potential advantages and applied to the particular environment, and the actual return can be calculated.

    Summary
    Test management is necessary and clearly improves the quality of software projects. The advantages of tool-based test management are evident. However, it is not always easy to quantify and clearly define the benefit. Often, a budget for testing projects is approved only after some unpleasant incident has happened. This can be avoided, though.

    Successful implementations of the test management tool HP Quality Center have shown that practical improvements can definitely be realized and the de facto profit can be calculated in advance. The general aspects of potential value can easily be transferred to the particular environment by applying project scoping. Data and facts gained then form the basis of a specific profit calculation. Tool-supported test management does not only pay off, but the benefit can also be quantified.

  • Poker – Change Management’s Fruit Fly

    As many others amongst my friends, I am addicted to poker. When I say poker, I am referring to the omnipresent Texas Hold´em Poker, and not to one of the Draw Poker versions that to my opinion rank among the games of pure chance.

    In my 2 years poker career, I have gone through the following phases:

    Phase

    		 Description Remarks
    Beginner So much busy with the framework of rules that nothing seems predictable Players are the others rather than myself
    Knowing the rules Having read a couple of How-to’s I understand the basic principle I am an active player. Amazingly often, I end up being the winner, otherwise my defeat is often dramatic
    Experienced player Discovered formerly hidden mechanisms and „soft factors”, trying to apply them Occasional success in „reading” my opponent, avoiding dramatic losses
    Undefeatable Well equipped with all „tools” Some extraordinary successes, but still avoidable errors
    Wise Am I really using all available tools? In order to be successful in the long run, new findings must permanently be brought to the game

    Each new finding made me feel better prepared to cope with my opponents. But I also understood that any new finding could turn my basic idea of the game inside out. It must be tried out and prove applicable before it gets part of my knowledge repertoire.

    Change Management 1)
    The short life cycle of a poker game is a perfect experimental ground for understanding the mechanisms of change management. But whereas it takes an IT change manager a few weeks or months to more or less successfully complete a project, including observing the effects of the changes to the entire environment – and thus learning from it, the cycle in a poker game takes no longer than a couple of minutes.
    As the fruit fly 2) with its short generation cycle for the geneticists, poker with its short game cycles can be the ideal research subject for change manager.

    Realizations

    • Patience; success can not be enforced. Acquiring change management competence is a process in several phases.
    • You might fail even if all conditions are optimal (AA).
    • As a beginner, playing seems to be easy-going. Your playing style is unusual (to others), courageous, imponderable and aggressive. Unfortunately, only in poker games this is a promising player attribute.
    • Planning to win in poker can be compared to a tree. Your starting point are the roots, from there you follow the branches, one after another. Only few players are aware of this. In most cases, as soon as they see a problem coming up, they first cut off the branches instead of going back to the roots. 3)
    • What is most decisive for a player to play a successful game is neither a good knowledge of mathematics, the ability to analyze the opponent, a good starting selection of cards in his hands nor a profound playing strategy. It is self-control. 3)
    • If you want to become a successful, lucky player, first work on your self-control. And I mean – every day! Nothing is comparably important. 3)

    However, there is a relevant difference between poker and change management. In a poker game, you can do everything right and still lose the game.

    In poker, you know your own cards and you know your opponents from the start. The latter are quite obviously determined to win, just like you. In change management, cards and opponents have to be agreed upon first.

    Sources
    1) beteo Blog: Change Management Posts
    2) Wikipedia: Dropsophila melanogaster
    3) Steve Badger: Poker Discipline

  • How not to Disclose a Secret – HP´s ERP4IT

    Whereas ERP is a synonym for software-supported Enterprise Planning and Controlling, ERP4IT stands for software-supported IT Planning and Controlling (ITPC).

    Those who are looking for solutions will without much doubt check out the ERP4IT offerings of the leading ERP system manufacturer SAP. SAP seems to be the only ERP software vendor for managing one´s own customer IT organization and IT products through SAP Solution Manager. Theoretically In view of the special requirements of IT planning and controlling frameworks and standards, SAP scores quite well. But judging the Patchwork of SAP Solution Manager from real ERP4IT requirements´perspective, which includes comprehensive application lifecycle management, the SAP Solution Manager will at most suit to support the management of SAP customizing.

    While in general the market seems to focus on trying to define the IT processes mainly by means of frameworks and standards. Because of the missing tool support or incomplete offering several large SAP users have already started their own projects to tackle diverse ERP4IT challenges building their own solutions. Like that already more than ten years ago, the first management platforms targeting SAP change und configuration management using ABAP and workflows have been built.

    Meanwhile, in the context of digitization and automation of IT processes including testing, Mercury products had provided the logical supplement of the above mentioned basic ”ERP4IT“ platforms. HP acquired and integrated these products into their portfolio.

    HP today is capable of offering a comprehensive solution „HP Best Technology for Optimization“ (HP BTO). HP BTO is a very useful compilation of software components. In suitable combinations it can fully meet the requirements for a real solution management solution, i.e. a comprehensive Application Lifecycle Management system, as well as those of an SAP ERP4IT system, even more so if combined with some basic functionalities of SAP Solution Manager.

    However, HP seems to primarily promote its software in the form of individual products, missing the opportunity of offering the integrated solution as HP BTO ERP4IT to customers more emphatically. Should the market success of the separate software components be an obstacle to a broad positioning of the comprehensive HP BTO solution? Too bad for IT organizations which are (still) left beyond the reach of this enormous potential value.

  • Can a Classic CMDB Cope With Business Service Management?

    Today´s IT in its role as service provider for the enterprise requires an immediate rethinking with regard to resources and configurations data management.

    If the datastore is not flexible enough, requirements resulting from service lifecycle management (SLM) might not be met to a satifactory degree and the provisioning of the CMDB services might not be as expected or as efficient as wanted.

    Configuration management databases (CMDB) used nowadays serve as rudimentary data pools and threaten to exist mainly for marketing reasons.

    A Sound Data Collection – Highly Exceeding Today´s Standard – is Necessary!
    A useful, efficient and active service lifecycle management (SLM) calls for a comprehensive enterprise service orientation and cross-company service management.

    To reach this goal, a homogenous and sound service database with an emphasis on „service“ is fundamental. Building up this database, the first step is to define a service catalog that allows all services including their relations to be identified. It is most important that all IT services are assigned to business services. This enables business service management (BSM) to execute impact analyses to an extent that would have been unthinkable ever before.

    From this perspective, a business service is an IT Service that creates direct value which becomes right away visible outside IT– due its obvious benefit to the business.

    At least one service access point per business service provides the point of entry to the targeted service and to the connection between business service and technical service.

    When collecting data for the service catalog, preferably by interviewing a number of steakholders, it is recommended to divide the service structure of the data collection into at least business, applications and infruastructure services from the beginning. The interviewer should always take the perspective of the interviewed person, as the service comsumer is the only one to tell if the provided service meets his/her requirements.

    There is more to a Service CMDB (S-CMDB)
    The data collected for the service catalog must be stored together with the usual data from other IT areas such as project portfolio management (PPM), IT development, and IT service management (ITSM).

    In order to do justice to a comprehensive service portfolio management approach, the data collection must contain all information, including their relations, needed for business as well as projects.

    Enabler of Comprehensive Service Portfolio Management
    The common data collection created for project portfolio management, IT development, and IT service management enables an efficient  holistic view of all IT and other projects and, in turn, serves as a basis for the targeted service portfolio management.

    Service Lifecycle

    The above figure illustrates that within the life cycle of a service, depending on the nature of the change, the currently prevailing requirement is considered either a project request or an operational issue. Through a holistic view, all service changes can be re-prioritized and grouped according to business requirements and users. This reduces risk within the implementation or problem solving cycle and ensures a seamless transition into business.

    Conventional CMDBs need to be extended if they want to meet the requirements of S-CMDBs and to achieve the high expected benefit to IT.

    About the author:
    Andreas Schegg, ITIL and Configuration Management Expert, is Senior Consultant at Ontrex AG, Winterthur, Switzerland.

  • E2E SAP Testing – Halfway Under Control?

    In many blogs, we have discussed the deficiencies in SAP testing. Changes to an existing system are the order of the day. Again and again, errors are corrected, customizing and programs must be adapted, new functions are rolled out. Also, technical changes as hot fixes and service packs must be installed, as well as upgrades. In view of the large number of changes, problems with testing is not want you really want. But most SAP customers have come to terms with it, solving retroactively the problems involved with rolling out badly or incompletely tested changes – amidst the applause of the business. This is quite an effort, but still considered a more sensible approach than testing the whole software system.

    Everyone will agree that this is not the approach we want. Fortunately, specialized consulting companies such as FocusFrame as well as manufacturers of testing software such as HP,  Panaya, IntelliCorp, IBIS and above all SAP have taken this to heart. However, we are still far from a real end-to-end (E2E) testing or quality process starting right from the business requirements level, but at least you can start a continuous E2E testing process covering all changes as soon as the transport of a SAP change request is due. And this is already a great benefit.

    What Does This Mean in Detail?

    SAP E2E testing process and tools

    • The first step is to analyze which SAP transactions and programs are affected by the change, on the basis of the changes due for transport and of the system or a model of it. This step is mostly referred to as Change Impact Testing. This task is supported by specialized products like HP Change Impact Testing (CIT) for SAP, SAP Test Automation and Optimization (SAP TAO) as well as IntelliCorp LiveCompare. An exciting alternative is Panaya Inc.´s pure SaaS solution. Using this service, the SAP user does not even have to install any software.
    • Once the involved transactions are known, it must be found out which testing scenarios are necessary. For this step, too, there is reasonable technical support now. As a result, the testing scenarios are identified and together with the underlying test script made available to the test management tool. This is accomplished by using SAP Test Automization and Optimization in combination with SAP Quality Center by HP.
    • In spite of above system support and test szenario reduction, the testing scenarios should – due to their large number – pass another filter. This step is widely referred to as Risk Based Testing. The point here is to reduce the number of tests to be executed to the really relevant ones. This step is supported by SAP TAO and, particularly, by SAP Quality Center by HP.
    • Then, the test management tool executes the filtered tests automatically. The results are evaluated and, if necessary, the defect management process is started and monitored. This task is assumed by SAP Quality Center by HP in combination with HP Quick Test Pro.

    From Transport Packet-to-End-Testing up to real E2E Testing
    All this sounds quite simple and logical. In practice, however, it is quite a challenge to set up and operate such an environment. As a methodologist, however, you will consider this „reactive“ approach still suboptimal as the above „E2E“ quality process, instead of starting from the beginning, meaning the requirements management, is initiated not before the changes have been executed and ready for transport. Information about the effects of changes is known to be useful on starting the projects from the project portfolio management, supporting the business analyst as well as the developers and the test team. SAP has become aware of this and is working on a solution using the new Business Process Change Analyzer (SAP BPCA) to enable real E2E quality management.

    Implementing SAP E2E testing correctly will change the poor SAP E2E quality mangement into a model for other commercial software solutions addressing quality management. The benefit of a consistent, comprehensive testing for SAP landscapes can hardly be overestimated. The reduced number of system breakdowns after the weekly roll-out of changes justifies the investment in this area – as every head of a SAP Competence Center will readily confirm. The somewhat less spectacular quality improvement along with the cost and risk reduction reached in the medium term, will provide a considerable profit by introducing a SAP E2E testing project in the context of an application lifecycle management initiative.

  • SAP Solution Manager – More Than Just SAP Marketing?

    As its name suggests, the SAP Solution Manager is designed to provide support for the management of SAP customer implementations. Does it perform this task? Or is it just one of SAP´s marketing instruments?

    Missing Functions for Complex System Landscapes
    When discussing the pros and cons of SAP Solution Manager, we must first of all give SAP credit for being one of the few vendors providing a solution management platform at all.

    But taking a closer look at the various components of SAP Solution Manager, what you see is rather some kind of patch work. It seems that many functions have been integrated just pro forma to comply with qualifications typically demanded by the market in RFPs (request for proposal)?

    Some of the  components, though existing, are only in parts or insufficiently integrated. In order to efficiently manage customer implementations, additional office solutions are needed. This, however, seems to be useful only for small-scale SAP implementations. More complex organizational structures or heterogenous SAP landscapes imply additional dependencies that prevent these solutions from answering the purpose.

    Unfortunately, in many SAP Solution Manager implementations the focus is not on what the customer actually requires, but on those functions offered by SAP Solution Manager by default.

    Expectation towards an Efficiently Working SAP Solution Management Platform
    Much of what we expect from a SAP solution management is comparable to what a comprehensive application lifecycle platform would offer. It is particularly important that the complete service lifecycle of the SAP implementation can be managed, including all documentary, organizational and technical interdependences, covering all phases from the generation of the first process implementations to extensions and error recovery, and up to process deactivation.

    Also, the complete cost and activity accounting (integrated financial management) should be made transparent all across the lifecycle of the solution. This is the only way to set up a cost-benefit equation for a customer implementation.

    The structure of the solution should provide subdivisions according to the Business Services (BS) it supports so that these services can be aligned with the overall goal of the enterprise. This results in an effective service portfolio management (SPM) and ensures the targeted value of the implementation. A working service portfolio management makes evident that in the context of a consistent service orientation, IT service management (ITSM) and project portfolio management (PPM) can no longer be regarded as isolated elements.

    In addition, advanced solution management applications should integrate consistency-ensuring measures directly into the processes in order to minimize risks. Wherever possible, automation should be favored, particularly for performing organizational tasks. This can be reached by digitization or coding.

    The following example clarifies above statement. Digitization prevents overtaker problems during transports (consistency-ensuring measures), because the transports are directly carried out (automation) upon release (organizational task).

    By the way: consistency-ensuring measures are particularly important for SAP customers using company templates when changes are transported: Applying Business Configuration Sets (BC Sets) or generally transporting SAP customizing changes can result in inconsistencies between templates and distributed implementations, because customizing of the involved systems can be changed at any time. Offering customizing synchronization and locking mechanisms, SAP Solution Manager provides a solution for this problem which unfortunately is not very well known.

    Summary
    It is crucial to success that the customer has a clear picture of all relevant IT processes involved in SAP solution management. This means that the focus must not be on the solution management tool, but on the risks that are addressed and minimized by Solution Manager. From this, we can directly derive the demands that should be placed on solution management.

  • OC Oerlikon – How SAP Roll-in Projects can Fail

    On Friday, October 26, 2007, inside-it.ch reported that OC Oerlikon will stop its super SAP project. The new approach is said to provide a „more intelligent, more flexible and cheaper solution that integrates all ERP systems of the business units using a central SAP consolidation tool“.

    This seems to simplify things, but why is it that SAP roll-in projects fail one after another? As a solution architect and interested oberserver of such projects, I dare to give some simple explanations:
    The originally pragmatic plan to technically avoid a number of varying ERP environments is in most cases not the primary goal. Often, the roll-in project is targeting to implement an operation with identical processes all across the enterprise and to benefit from best practices. Extremely challenging goals!

    Unfortunately, the project’s target organization and processes for the overall company often end up being insufficiently adjusted to SAP. In addition, the organizational and cultural complexity of such a original technical project requires that all quality assuring measures are clearly defined and strictly adhered to right from the beginning. Very often in such initiatives this is done much later, if at all.

    Of course, these are not the only things to be observed in order to ensure success of a SAP R/3 roll-in project or any other super project. But to begin with, every project manager is well advised to be alert to the stumbling blocks in SAP roll-in projects as described above.

  • HP BTO Software Centers – Overview

    HP offers a number of BTO Centers. These software packages support in the context of a BTO strategy specific phases of the application lifecycle. The following overview is meant to shed light on the HP BTO jungle.

    HP BTO Centers

    IT STRATEGY

    • Project and Portfolio Management Center (CIO Office)
      The IT management solution enables control and documentation of the enterprise processes, particularly with regard to an optimization of priorities, staff members and processes in IT organizations. For this purpose, modules for the management of portfolio, demand, time, changes, projects, resources, finances and programs are available. Upon coordination with business processes and enterprise requirements, the distribution and use of resources are optimized and processes are standardized (IT Governance).
    • SOA Center (CTO Office)
      The HP BTO solutions for governance, quality and management of service-oriented architectures (SOA) are designed to help customers to minimize economical risks in SOA project phases and to create a comprehensively controlled, business-oriented SOA basis. HP SOA Center enables registry/repository, policy management, consumer management, policy enforcement, performance monitoring und problem solving.

    APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

    • Quality Center
      With HP Quality Center, a cross-enterprise exchange of information about test requirements, test planning, test execution and error reporting is possible, as well as checking for web security issues covering the entire testing and development team. Through functional test runs, GUI interfaces are automatically tested in applications and various release cycles.
    • Performance Center
      HP Performance Center features a real-time simulation of the maximum access demanded by customer requests using active virtual user input of the applications. This enables system optimization before „going live“ and ensures the desired steady availability. A required optimization can be controlled and accomplished under system load by help of an analysis program. Thus, new web or SAP applications are made secure before going into production.
    • Application Security Center
      By using the technologies of HP Applications Security Center, security gaps in web applications can be identified and judged all across the lifecycle: from development and quality control up to operation. Also applications that are already running in a productive system, can be checked for security gaps. In addition, audit and compliance requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIP AA or PCI can be met.

    (IT) OPERATIONS

    • HP Universal CMDB
      HP Universal CMDB is a configuration management database for IT organizations planning to implement business service management and ITIL-based initiatives. This software allows you to take up, document and store – in addition to physical configuration elements – logical elements. It also provides extended functionality such as an effects analysis and access control for building up and maintaining CMDB.

    Business Service Management

    • Business Availability Center
      This solution allows you to monitor the availability and performance of applications in operation for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Business processes, service levels, applications an the underlying infrastructure are coordinated to one another. The infrastructure is visualized by a graphical view with the traffic light set of colors red, orange and green showing the state of operation. A drill down is available for detailed view and error analysis. BAC is used to ensure the active operation of all business-relevant applications and to verify internal or external SLA agreements.
    • Operations Center
      This solution features a comprehensive, service-oriented access to IT management. Information is integrated and synchronized across management silos, IT and business are connected to one another. This distributed, scalable management solution which also includes security features allows you to monitor, control and record the status and performance of different IT environments, covering network, system, databases, applications, services and Internet.
    • Network Management Center
      This network management solution is considered a strategic and particularly important investment. In the last few years it has been established as an indispensible component of error and event management as well as visualization of network topologies. Network configuration, network events, application performance, and network analysis are the main areas involved.

    Service Automation

    • Data Center Automation Center
      Process automation in IT centers can be effectively supported by HP Data Center Automation Center allowing IT organizations to easily increase cost efficiency and to better meet quality and compliance requirements.
    • Client Automation Center
      More and more security risks, increasing availability requirements, and the rapidly growing number of mobile and remote staff members make it more difficult to effectively and efficiently manage client computers – a requirement, however, which every modern success-oriented enterprise should focus upon. HP Client Automation Center allows you to automate relevant IT processes across the lifecycle of the client computers, no matter where their physical locations are.

    IT Service Management

    • Service Management Center
      HP Service Manager is a comprehensive, fully integrated IT service desk solution targeted to reduce the time spent on problem solving. Thanks to ITIL-based best practice processes and a scalable, service-oriented architecture, consistent, integrated processes can be rolled out all across IT organizations. Event, problem, change, and release management processes can be automated. Service level management and catalog-based service requests are supported. All processes are coordinated by means of configuration management.

Powered by