Enterprise Performance Specialist John Seifert recently spoke to performance analysts and capacity planners at CMG about the chart types and functions available in TeamQuest IT Service Analyzer and Reporter.

The three main benefits from the software include the ability to:
Align performance analysis and reporting with business and IT services
Group and manage IT resources across the enterprise
Show and report on relationships within the enterprise

The best illustration he provided was of a VMware report (slide 60), which showed an array of ways to convey information, analyze data, and present performance/capacity data in an effective way. This is the kind of information that presents itself well to management.

Yes, the audience saw the numerous chart types such as table, line, pie, area, heat map, and others. Seifert explained the pros and cons of each and shared his favorites. He did the same with the chart functions.

An interesting part of the presentation was when John showed the gauges and heat maps. John highlighted the ability to view data and highlight by color which is good for performance analysis and hotspot detection (slide 35) something that will help IT better communicate with business.

His gauge display (slide 33) showed how well your IT assets are being used. John also suggested that gauges can be used for max, mean and min measurements.

Find more information on the latest TeamQuest software release.

What were people asking about at CMG this year? Questions varied from workloads, automated reporting and TeamQuest Model, to collecting metrics in AIX and implementing a public cloud.

Read this post from TeamQuest Technology Summit 2009 on TeamQuest software and AIX.

While I can’t go into great detail, I can say that several visitors got what they wanted – a complete answer.

While not known for marketing its services, TeamQuest fielded a few questions about IT Service Optimization (ITSO). Customers saw an ITSO demo or two from Enterprise Performance Specialist Rey Rios along with capacity management tools that complement the ITSO process.

CMG was a great opportunity to continue supporting the individuals and teams responsible for ensuring efficient and scalable IT service delivery to the business.

BTW, stay tuned for more information on TeamQuest Performance Software in the Cloud.

Today Mike DenHartog of TeamQuest clued attendees in at CMG 2009 on the nuances of managing the performance of AIX LPARs in a PowerVM virtualized environment. Mike told the audience it’s important to know the meaning of key parameters. You need to understand what exactly the data are telling you about performance when using advanced virtualization features available for allocating resources to IBM LPARs. Based on comments from the audience, some tools out there do not report information in a sensible manner, adding to the potential confusion for people striving to understand LPAR performance.

Mike also provided some capacity planning examples using TeamQuest Model to prepare for workload consolidation and migration in an AIX environment. He showed how TeamQuest Model can be used to answer what-if questions regarding LPAR configuration parameters such as:

1. Entitled capacity
2. Capped/uncapped
3. Variable capacity weight
4. Number of processors
5. SMT on or off

The presentation included some graphs showing just how these parameters can change system performance.

This presentation included a lot of practical information and examples for folks using LPARs. As I understand it, we will have a white paper and/or video edition of this presentation available in the near future. I’ll update this blog entry as soon as I have a URL to share with you.

This morning at CMG in Grapevine, Texas, TeamQuest’s Rey Rios gave an excellent talk about TeamQuest IT Service Optimization (ITSO) and how it relates to the broader, more encompassing ITIL framework.

ITSO is really a focused subset of ITIL, making it easier to get quick wins than if you dive headlong into a full ITIL implementation. It is analogous to the way that TeamQuest is able to excel at providing performance tools. We take careful aim on issues that affect the efficiency of IT services, and try not to be distracted by other aspects of systems management. Integration points in TeamQuest software allow customers to use TeamQuest’s specialized tools with whatever service desk or CMDB solution they choose, for example.

ITSO provides a formula for implementing effective ITIL Capacity Management, and TeamQuest tools can aid in that process. This will enable you to balance cost with performance, using business priorities to provide the proper perspective.

For more information about ITSO and ITIL, check out the links in the blog entry about Rey’s earlier CMG presentation. There is a video version of Rey’s presentation available on the TeamQuest website. You can find it on the TeamQuest VideoSeries web page.

Guess what? TeamQuest covered virtualization at its user group yesterday. That isn’t a big surprise since the company’s latest release is pretty focused on maximizing VMware performance.

TeamQuest Engineer Scott Johnson delivered his “Business Benefits of our VMware Modeling Solution” presentation in a brief 30 minutes. He focused on a process such as IT Service Optimization, increasing IT maturity, and beginning with the end in mind.

“To be blunt,” said Johnson, “the primary benefit of capacity modeling for the VMware environment is that it will save you money.”

VMware referenced an IDC report that cited 20-30 percent lower cost-per-application savings, for example.

Other benefits of VM ware modeling cited by Johnson included:

• Better service to our customers
• Efficient use of existing resources
• Good stewardship of capital investments for the future

Johnson compared achieving the benefits of modeling VMware to hiking Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park.

Success is fraught with obstacles and risk. Companies and individuals must focus, persevere and keep the end-goal in mind.

I believe Johnson will go into more technical detail in his vendor presentation which will be covered later this week.

TeamQuest Enterprise Performance Specialist Rey Rios gave an energized and insightful presentation called “Complement Your ITSO & ITIL Processes with TeamQuest Solutions.”

He used a nice analogy to explain SLAs – ordering food in a restaurant. What are your expectations when you go into a restaurant? You expect to be seated, you expect to look at and order from a menu, and you expect your food in a timely manner. If it’s going to take longer than expected – Paella in this gastronomical example – the customer should know.

Rios left the dinner table to walk the audience through ITIL versions 2 and 3 and compared them to the five-step process created by TeamQuest several years ago called IT Service Optimization.

The pro-ITIL EPS suggested companies interested in ITIL must ask the following questions before jumping into ITIL:

• What is the goal of the business?
• What services do we offer?
• What are our customers’ expectations?

Making the Move Toward Maturity
He referenced the Gartner Maturity Model discussing how companies can move from the chaotic to value stage with the help of TeamQuest software. He said that one in three companies is in the reactive or chaotic stage of maturation – fighting fires at best.

Rio suggests that IT can use TeamQuest software to help ITSO & ITIL endeavors by:

• Ensuring optimal use of IT
• Improving availability and reliability of critical systems
• Providing cost analysis decisions
• Supporting the delivery of business plans
• Decreasing time to incident resolution and quicker root cause analysis
• Providing accurate measurement for decision making

Read a customer’s account of how Rey helped a company realize business benefits through ITSO. The customer, Law School Admission Council, streamlined its infrastructure to completely fulfill its service demands and is applying capacity planning to support a massive roll-out of new applications to hundreds of law schools throughout North America.

Day one at CMG and I visited the TeamQuest User Group to hear several presentations. The first one was titled “A Pragmatic Look at Cloud Computing, Capacity Management, and TeamQuest Solutions” by the TeamQuest Director of Product Management Scott Adams.

After going through a brief description of cloud computing and its benefits, Adams spent time discussing TeamQuest’s Capacity Management Information System (CMIS) and the company’s data analysis and automation plans.

TeamQuest provides a CMIS which provides the historical data needed to make informed decisions on new services and major service enhancements. In addition, high level modeling of different scenarios helps leaders understand the potential impacts of new and changed services on the IT infrastructure. For more information, read “Release 10 and ITIL Version 3” on the TeamQuest website.

Adams’ presentation focused more on the relevancy of capacity management and the fact that the cloud is more about delivering services than it is a technology.

As product manager, Adams explained that TeamQuest will focus on:

• Adapting to new technology
• Scaling to the large enterprise
• Automation, real-time analysis

Questions dealt with the ability to service cloud service providers and/or cloud users. How does TeamQuest software interface with the CMDB? Here’s an article on the CMDB.

I’m headed to an event later tonight, but plan to make two more posts before tomorrow morning.

BTW, TeamQuest announced a software release in October 2009. Adams covered many of its benefits and future enhancements in today’s discussion. What do you need in capacity planning software for your IT and business needs?