June 2005 Volume 9, Number 1

Security and Systems Management Spotlight

Monitoring Critical Business Services with VISUAL Message Center™

By Joe Baumgarten, Sales Engineer

Before I came to my present position with SoftLanding, I was quite proud to be out there "in the trenches" with many of you who are reading this article right now. I was one of a small team of IT Support "techies" charged with keeping the iSeries — and all that depended on it — running smoothly.

In this position for many years, I had a recurring dream. I'd come into the office one morning and there would be a surprise party — in my honor! All the users — from the CEO to the hundreds of data entry operators — would be there. They'd all clap me on the back and say things like "Way to get that batch job out of a LCKW, Joe!" and "Hey, you answered that tape waiting message in record time last week!" or "Nice catch on that modem that wasn't turned on."

My reality, however, was more of a recurring nightmare.

"Joe! Customer Service is getting terrible response time and customers are queued up ten minutes deep in the ACD!"

"Joe! Our biggest customer called and none of its subscribers can access the Web site!"

"Joe! I've got 200 data entry operators who can't sign on for some reason!"

"Joe! Don't forget to get milk on the way home!"

OK, so never mind that last one, but I'm sure you can relate to the others! How often are you bombarded with so many small problems that you don't know which fire to fight first? And those are just the problems that you know about. When the CEO does darken your door, it's more likely that it's to remind you that for every minute those data entry operators are idle, his bottom line drops $10,000. (Unsaid in his message is the fact that if it goes on much longer, your bottom just might drop right along with it.)

These issues are the ingredients in the recipe for stress. They're the formula for long hours. There are a few possible solutions. One: hire more staff and pray that they can come up to speed quickly. Two: become a Sales Engineer for a leading software house in beautiful New Hampshire. Those are good — but there's an even better third choice: automate the monitoring of your critical business services and the many individual components that drive them. To do this, you need a tool and a paradigm.

The tool is an amazing product called VISUAL Message Center. The paradigm is an equally amazing IT management methodology known as Business Service Management (BSM).

Let's talk first about BSM. The concept of BSM is to monitor a process as whole, rather than its individual components. That's not to say that monitoring the individual components is not necessary; it most certainly is! (After all, how else would you know that the service was down?) However, if all you know is that this router is down, or that a message is waiting, you have no information that helps you decide which item to manage first. Can you quickly tell which is impacting your business services? Wouldn't it be great if you could instantly understand the ramifications of each problem to your business as a whole? That is BSM.

Let's take a look at BSM from another point of view. When the CEO appears in your door saying data entry is down, where do you look for clues? Even if this process is solely iSeries-based, there are dozens and dozens of places where you may have to look. Do you remember them all? Do you have enough authority to those commands, data areas, and system values? Is all the information readily available, or is it stuck in detached receivers, off-site backup tapes, or in a message queue that just got cleared? How does that make you look to the CEO?

Of course, in today's world, most of your critical business services use components from other platforms. A BSM tool that can't monitor all of a process' individual components can offer you only limited success.

VISUAL Message Center can monitor components running on other platforms. Imagine watching for the presence of a file in a directory on a server. Or for a cryptic entry in a WebSphere NT log file. Or for a link in a Web site that is broken. Or for a key field in a critical database file on any server that has been changed illegally or incorrectly.

Now imagine that, at the moment the CEO appears and reports this disaster, you simply bring up a map of the components that make up this process. On this map, one of the components is red and blinking. You double click on it. It shows you a message indicating why this component is failing. How much time have you just shaved off your recovery? How much money have you just saved on the bottom line? (Not to mention saving your bottom in the bargain.) What does the CEO think of you now?

Suppose this tool was so intelligent that it would actually alert the proper person instantly when this component failed, so that the problem gets addressed before it escalates to the CEO? Even better, suppose this product was so smart that you could actually teach it to automatically respond with an action that fixes the problem? Well, VISUAL Message Center really is that smart.

Finally, you are probably realizing that your company is now requiring more hard-copy accountability from your IT department: service-level reporting, availability statistics, and so on. Here again, VMC delivers tremendous value. By adopting a processes view, you can now provide much more meaningful reports on the availability or performance of each critical process.

Business Service Management techniques served by the VISUAL Message Center software elevates IT's value in your organization from a chaotic fire-fighter to the protector of mission-critical business services. Who knows — maybe there IS a surprise party in your future!

(Just don't forget the milk.)

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