BSM Views

I hear time and time again about the IT still being seen as a cost center, and the CIO as management rather than executive, despite the title. This is changing, but it still, there are lots of organizations where IT still has a unflattering reputation, and it not viewed as strategic to the bottom line and success of the company. This is really ironic, as it seems that Wall Mart took over world with great logistics, supported by great IT, is this example not good enough for people.

The reality, as anyone in IT knows, is that IT is now a critical part, and likely most strategic gear in the company whether it is acknowledged or not. As this transformation occurs, the CIO gains greater power, and greater responsibility. Some still ask, why CIO’s are not yet equals with the C execs. Lots of writers postulate reasons, and there are seminars to go with those reasons, but in the end it comes down to the leadership of each CIO. As one CIO I know put it “If you run a tight ship, it will be recognized and you will have a place at the table.”

Here is an interesting article on all the other reason: Why CIOs Struggle to Become More Strategic.

Event Management seems the puzzle piece that has fallen on the floor, and no one notices until the puzzle is almost complete. Traditional thinking seems to be that you can, through proper filtering, just send infrastructure messages into the Service Desk. Either, the filters have worked well, and select few important messages do get through and it works, or filtering has been implemented poorly, and the service desk is flooded with messages, prompting a quick shut down (aka the fire hose effect). In the later case it tends to be some time before another attempt is made, if ever. The case where the filtering works, messages to get through properly, however, there is opportunity loss, because proper event management has not taken place.

Where proper event management is done, a great deal of good data can come through from the system messages. In addition to filtering, messages are also normalized, correlated, and root cause information gets passed through as well. This more complete approach has great benefits both in further processing of coming messages to ensure the most intelligent messages get through, and also downstream where the service desk gets better quality information, which helps with faster incident resolution.

For more information, here is a white paper on the benefits of real Event Management. Event Managment Whitepaper.