The Definitive Guide to Business Service Management - Chapter 1 Now Available
Though the title of the guide may not initially excite the systems administrator in you, the content is actually something you'll find pretty cool. A few months ago I was asked by Compuware, the company that makes Vantage Service Manager (formerly Centauri) to write a book. This book would discuss a philosophy of systems management called Business Service Management.
The short synopsis of BSM is thus: Flip your systems monitoring around 180 degrees. Now you get an idea of how your systems are doing from the perspective of their users. When you do this, you gain some very useful information. First, you gain knowledge of how your systems are doing from a dollars-and-cents standpoint. "Who cares if this router goes down -- I want to know how much it is costing my business!" Second, you enable some very useful real-time and historical dashboards that provide heads-up information not only to IT but also to traditionally non-technical business leaders.
More after the jump...
So I began writing this book, and interestingly enough the more I researched it the more excited I got about it. Their product and indeed this whole school of thought when it comes to monitoring is actually quite ingenious. If we can manipulate traditional monitoring data into something that's consumable by non-technical people, then those people can go further into helping us get what we need for our enviornment.
When they understand our computing environment, they have better data to work with us. At the same time, they get the warm fuzzy that their systems are correctly servicing their customers.
The book starts with three chapters that discuss:
Chapter 1 - What really is BSM? Why are we talking about it and why is it interesting?
Chapter 2 - How is IT maturing from an organizational perspective and how must we evolve for us to better understand the needs of our business (I'm particularly excited about this chapter, as it relates to us in this Community quite specifically).
Chapter 3 - How has traditional montioring evolved over the years to recognize the need for the business-centric valuation of monitoring data that BSM provides.
Only then do we actually get into the nitty-gritty of installing BSM, which arrives in Chapter 4.
Chapter 1 is up right now at this link and new chapters will be released each month. For the time being, there is also a direct link (with a nifty graphic) on the Compuware main page at www.compuware.com.
Check it out and let us know what you think. I'm particularly and personally interested in hearing your thoughts on the first three chapters as they're released.
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