Author Profile - Scott Turkow has 8 years of experience in the Enterprise Software space, primarily in Operations and Sales Ops roles. Scott was previously the Senior Operations Manager at Integrien Corporation, the leading intelligent systems management company that enables the predictable operation of mission critical applications. Prior to Integrien, Scott was with the Resource Management Software Group of EMC, which focused on the development and sale of automated network management products. A tri-athlete in training, Scott tries to be outdoors when he’s unshackled from his computer.
July 21, 2008
Death by Data
Often we failed to see that we have established a process of collecting too much data – creating mass confusion and frustration on behalf of our team. In addition, not enough of the right data was collected – resulting unreliable or false alerts. And ultimately, not enough intelligence was applied to data gathering, filtering or correlation.
"A typical enterprise environment has no shortage of data being collected from devices, applications, operating systems, etc. by multiple monitoring products. Each product has its own strengths in collecting specific metrics. More to the point, each product has an idiosyncratic impact on both your operational processes and your ability to ensure the availability and responsiveness of critical business services. Some tools collect lots of metrics on the theory that more data is better. Others use metrics to help diagnose an issue, but only after IT staff has been informed of the issue by the ticketing system. A few even analyze metrics to predict problems ahead. With an ever-shrinking IT budget and “do more with less” directives, IT operations professionals face a conundrum."
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May 27, 2008
“Good Enough” Isn’t Enough
Uptime is measured in nines: 3 nines give you 99.9% reliability, about 8 hours and 46 minutes of downtime a year. The “gold standard” is 5 nines - 99.999% reliability, which translates to a total downtime of no longer than 5 minutes per year. Gold standard uptime is usually reserved for telephone service, internet access, banking systems, and cable TV. And then there’s 6 nines, for military systems – not so fun when your defense system goes down, but even the military will accept 31.5 seconds of down time per year.
Clearly the more 9’s the better, but there is a “cost per 9.” Since massive redundancy is required to support more reliant systems, the cost/value balance typically falls in favor of being down for an expected number of hours and minutes. This is the “good enough” approach.
My question is simple, when is “Good Enough” isn't Enough?
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April 17, 2008
What Will They TAX Next?
For years, many organizations have been over-investing in IT assets and then wondering where the biggest chunk of the budget goes? I’m an IT tax professional (Suze Orman has nothing on me), so here’s a free tax tip that falls into the “overlooked deduction” department – it’s the “labor tax”, silly. And not necessarily in terms of headcount, but the manual effort tied to tasks that can, and should, be automated.
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March 19, 2008
What’s Luck got to do with it?
Q: What’s Luck got to do with (preventing data center catastrophe)?
IT has become far too complex for old defensive methods of collecting and monitoring. System interdependencies, not individual component failures, are the primary threat to enterprise IT performance and availability. Tools that look at the business service holistically and utilize sophisticated, real-time analytics to forecast possible problem areas provide the best opportunity to become truly proactive. While luck may help you draw that inside straight during your weekly poker games, it has no place in Business Service Management.
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February 28, 2008
Hope Is Not Enough
What would you do if your company’s most vital business service went down?
If you’re an avid reader of LoveMyTool, you would know that the right answer is to stop and think. You should have long realized your IT environment is not a simple plug-and-play shop. You should already be award that IT complexity continues to compound and you need to find a new approach to managing critical business services.
But if you don't, this article might convince you.
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