IT Service Optimization (ITSO) Tools

Tools that support ITSO processes can be classified into three core areas:

1. Performance Analysis — proactive problem detection, root cause analysis, diagnosis and resolution
2. Capacity Management — managing service delivery at a datacenter or enterprise level
3. Capacity Planning — optimizing IT for efficiency & avoiding problems

Underlying all of these areas is, of course, performance data. Data collection, storage and management are important considerations that impact all aspects of managing service performance. That's where a fourth tool comes in handy, a Capacity Management Information System.

Performance Analysis

Performance analysis consists of two principal activities: reactive performance analysis and proactive performance analysis. Reactive analysis occurs after an adverse event. Proactive analysis is concerned with preventing such events from affecting the smooth delivery of IT services.

Reactive analysis of an adverse event includes activities such as:

• Monitoring performance and alerting appropriate people or software when problems are detected
• Correlating performance data to locate the IT component that is the root cause
• Drilling down from an anomalous point on a performance graph to determine who or what is responsible
• Visually comparing current performance with past performance in an effort to understand the cause of an event

Proactive analysis includes activities such as:

• Monitoring and reporting on trends and cycles in system performance and projecting future performance levels as compared to service levels specified in the service definition
• Analyzing trends to determine how best to ensure that service levels will be met in the future
• Identifying underutilized capacity for potential redeployment

Proactive analysis is preferable to reactive analysis, since it prevents disruptive events, ensures a smooth-running data center, and eliminates time spent fighting performance fires.

TeamQuest Analyzer is a real-time and historical performance analysis solution used to proactively detect, investigate, and diagnose IT service performance issues in heterogeneous, virtualized, and cloud environments.

Capacity Management

Enterprise capacity management often requires some level of automation, since these activities integrate data from a variety of sources.

It is important to be able to provide timely reports with the appropriate level of detail to various levels in the organization. Periodic reports for management can track performance against service levels. Financial reports can demonstrate IT's contribution to organizational goals and identify IT resources consumed by various departments. Interactive reports can be important for investigating the cause of performance problems.

A good capacity management tool:

• Automates capacity management across the datacenter or enterprise
• Encapsulates and automates analytic expertise, via built-in intelligence and via extensions you add based on your own circumstances and knowledge
• Can help you identify future problems before users are affected
• Points out tactical and strategic opportunities for IT optimization and problem prevention

TeamQuest Surveyor is an enterprise-class capacity management solution capable of automatically analyzing and reporting on all of your IT infrastructure - regardless of the vendor or technology. TeamQuest Surveyor federates performance data from whatever sources you have on hand, including home-grown and third-party performance software, applications, business processes and more.

Capacity Planning

Capacity planning is the key to an efficient, smooth-running data center. Capacity planning is about predicting performance, allowing services to be provisioned with just the right hardware configuration to accommodate forecasted changes or spikes in business workloads. Capacity planning can also help prevent performance fires, freeing human resources that would otherwise be spent troubleshooting.

Capacity planning helps IT organizations to:

• Accurately and efficiently provision new applications
• Reduce, delay and sometimes completely avoid costs
• Justify upgrades with objective analyses
• Optimally configure systems to accommodate forecasted changes in business
• Migrate systems to take advantage of new technology
• Consolidate servers to simplify management and gain economies of scale
• Mitigate risk by playing out potential scenarios in advance and then preparing for them

There are various methods of capacity planning, each suitable in different circumstances, including trending, simulation modeling and analytic modeling.

TeamQuest Predictor is a capacity planning solution that accurately identifies the resources required to support consistent service delivery at appropriate risk levels. One of the only capacity planning solutions available that uses a sophisticated analytic queuing network solver behind-the-scenes to provide fast and accurate results without requiring duplicate hardware or artificial loads.

Capacity Management Information System (CMIS)

A Capacity Management Information System (CMIS) provides a means of collecting, storing and managing performance data supporting all of the previously-mentioned performance and capacity analysis tools. In fact, using a CMIS for capacity management is an ITIL best practice.

Ideally a CMIS:

• Delivers the information you need for high-level reporting and detailed problem-solving
• Provides a single book of record for all performance data, so that you always know where to find what you need
• Works across all of your technology silos, integrating and synchronizing data gathered from a variety of sources
• Eliminates the need to maintain multiple, disparate data repositories, by providing one virtual performance database
• Scales to handle all of your IT infrastructure, now and into the future

TeamQuest CMIS efficiently collects, stores, and manages business and IT service performance data in a highly-scalable distributed performance database. It is designed to manage data from a wide variety infrastructure elements in physical, virtual and cloud environments.