The Mandate for
Lights-Out IT Management
Webtorials Editorial/Analyst Division
Posted September 2008
Abstract:
In order to be regarded as being
successful, IT organizations must continually provide new value added services
and applications. Being able to add these new services and applications is
increasingly difficult as the IT environment becomes ever more complex and a
growing percentage of the IT organization’s resources are consumed just
maintaining the existing environment.
Automating key network management
tasks is one of the steps that IT management can take in order to free up the
resources required to develop and implement new services and applications. When
evaluating automated management tools, IT organizations should look for:
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An integrated system that
supports find, configure and monitor functions |
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Support for a customizable user
interface |
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Multi-vendor, multi-element,
multi-domain support |
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Service-level awareness and
reporting |
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Support for virtualized
environments |
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Support for physical and logical
network topologies and root cause analysis |
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Integrated functionality across
the Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, Security (FCAPS) model
and Service Level Management |
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The ability to assist in the
rapid creation and/or modification of a service |
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Support of a sophisticated CMDB |
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A high degree of automation
within each function and across functions |
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Ease of integration with other
network management tools |