NetResults Newsletter

In Focus

Qmunity: Helping Us Help You with Just-in-Time Responsiveness

A message from Chris Pick, NetIQ CMO & Vice President of Products

It seems like yesterday that I introduced you to Qmunity, NetIQ's new online community. The site has been live for about 60 days, and it is really gaining momentum – with 175 percent improvement for new threads over last year's total in just eight weeks; and 552 percent improvement in the number of monthly posts compared to our averages pre-launch.

Figure 1: Qmunity homepage

Ultimately, Qmunity is meant to be your site, and it allows us to provide you with the best and most timely answers and product information possible. As a direct response to customer feedback, Qmunity provides you with more opportunities to interact with your peers and NetIQ experts than ever before. Although we have always placed an emphasis on in-person events such as AppManager User Groups and NetConnect, we know your time may be limited and your resources may be tight – especially given some of the economic challenges that we are all facing as business needs expand or change.

With this in mind, we plan to continue to refine Qmunity further to complement our live events. We know that the new product forums will mesh better with your busy schedule, and it will likely be a better resource for the just-in-time responsiveness that you need in order to keep delivering high-quality IT services. Plus, where better to go for more consistent input and updates via our tips and tricks blogs and vlogs, user groups, and notification forums?

Another key area where Qmunity is helping us to help you is in the support and influence of product development. We are listening to you – as part of a much broader user group – to ensure that priority is placed on the product feature and function development that really matters. Qmunity enables us to be more responsive to your needs and issues based on your forum threads, direct feedback, discussions, voting and user group participation.

Yes, there have been some growing pains and the Qmunity team reminds me constantly that we can always do better. We are working on a number of new features to improve and expand Qmunity for you. Over the next few months, you will see the addition of:

• Our NetIQ® AppManager® Knowledge Depot
• The sharing of NetIQ® AegisTM workflow templates
• Expanded capabilities for Joint Development Partners (JDPs)
• An improved user and group search
• Updates to profile and reputation functionality

For now, check out our write-ups below on innovations straight from the NetIQ labs including the latest NetIQ Aegis 2.0 release and four new NetIQ Aegis adapters. This 2.0 release for NetIQ Aegis, our IT Process Automation (ITPA) platform, delivers enhancements around organizing the workflow designer for greater ease-of-use; greater control of input forms; and numerous other new and improved features. Our new adapters, when coupled with NetIQ Aegis, allow you to control the sprawl of your multi-vendor management tools, while reducing your overall costs through automation. Also, read the latest update on NetIQ® AppManager® Module Builder, our new product that enables you to close the gap between your IT operations team and your product experts through performance management. Expect to hear more about this as our summer release date approaches.

What's New

The NetIQ Difference: IT Process Automation

IT Process Automation (ITPA) is different from other automation efforts. Most IT organizations have plenty of tools to perform automation, such as running backups, job scheduling, systems management, provisioning tools, virtual server management, and so on. But all of these point automation tools raise another problem: how to coordinate the activities between them to prevent conflict, ensure successful execution, and maximize use of resources. This control and coordination effort is the challenge that ITPA solves, providing an opportunity for cost reduction by eliminating wasted effort.

NetIQ Aegis, an IT Process Automation technology, bridges the gaps between the desire of management for control and visibility, and the desire of administrators to get things done. It accomplishes this by integrating with and controlling existing tools already in place, including ticketing systems and Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs), utilizing predefined workflow diagrams.

To further support this integration, NetIQ has recently released the new NetIQ Aegis Adapter for EMC Smarts. This adapter enables customers to:

• Auto-populate incident records with details from EMC Smarts, helping to pinpoint the problem source.
• Suppress events during change windows by setting the maintenance mode in EMC Smarts based on change approvals in RFCs.
• Integrate server and network reports collected by EMC Smarts and other monitoring tools so that server and network teams can coordinate event response and speed time to resolution.
• Populate a disconnected CMDBs on a defined schedule by invoking the EMC Smarts Domain Manager to discover and reconcile new devices with other discovered objects and push that information to a CMDB, which is critical to incident, problem and change management.

Also new is NetIQ Aegis 2.0. This latest version includes features such as:

• A scheduler that triggers process execution at regular or irregular intervals to provide job scheduling functionality.
• Organization of the workflow designer features in a new ribbon format.
• Secure mail using SMTP Secure Password Authentication (SPA).
• Greater control of input forms, such as setting widths and setting fields as optional.
• Support for the NetIQ AppManager 7.0.4 release
• Support for NetIQ AppManager Custom Properties

NetIQ Aegis makes all other NetIQ products more powerful by automating processes when triggered by their output or by controlling them to automate steps within a process. NetIQ takes this a step further by continuing to develop adapters to other popular vendor tools. Let us know if you have a product that needs an adapter so that you can begin to take advantage of the significant return on investment that NetIQ Aegis enables.

Qmunity in Action: How-to Video Clips and Demos Now Available

NetIQ product management recently published a series of video shorts to Qmunity, our new online community. You can view these videos to discover proven best practices for using our solutions. This resource is another tool developed by NetIQ to help you continue to get the most out of your IT investments and deliver enhanced value to your organization.

You will find a number of how-to videos and product demos posted to the NetIQ blogs, including NetIQ AppManager and Security Webb. Current NetIQ customers can also visit the product-specific forums for more in-depth demonstrations of features and procedures. And if you're looking for an older post with a video clip that you liked, browse the archives of the media gallery.

To give you a taste of what's online and what's to come as more video clips are published, check out this video clip on how NetIQ AppManager deploys agentless server monitoring with the Network Devices Module using built-in Knowledge Scripts®. The net result is a comprehensive systems management and monitoring solution: Systems requiring proxy monitoring are not ignored and do not require additional third-party tools to gather needed metrics.

If you have suggestions for videos you'd like to see, please post a comment to the blog or the forums. NetIQ would also like to invite you to build and post your own videos to the Qmunity forums. If you have an interesting use case or innovation leveraging our products and you would like to share it visually, please contact us for tips on creating your own video.

New NetIQ Releases

Configuration Control

SCAP Module for NetIQ® Secure Configuration ManagerTM

Enterprise Administration

NetIQ® Change GuardianTM for Group Policy 3.0
NetIQ® Change GuardianTM for Microsoft Windows 1.4
NetIQ® Group Policy AdministratorTM 6.0

IT Process Automation

NetIQ® AegisTM 2.0
NetIQ® AegisTM Adapter for BMC Remedy
NetIQ® AegisTM Adapter for Databases
NetIQ® AegisTM Adapter for EMC Smarts
NetIQ® AegisTM Adapter for Microsoft Exchange

Security Management

NetIQ® Security Solutions for iSeries 8.1

Systems Management

NetIQ® Analysis Center 2.7 Domain Migration Utility
NetIQ® Analysis Center VMware Supplemental Report Pack
NetIQ® AppManager® 7.0.4
NetIQ® AppManager® for BlackBerry Enterprise Server
NetIQ® AppManager® for HP Systems Insight Manager
NetIQ® AppManager® for Lotus Domino
NetIQ® AppManager® for Microsoft Cluster Server
NetIQ® AppManager® for Microsoft Internet Information Server
NetIQ® AppManager® for Microsoft Windows
NetIQ® AppManager® Performance Profiler 4.1

IT Insight

Closing the Gap for IT Operations and Applications Experts

Have you ever wished you could provide performance management proactively for your company's point of sale application, WinFax, Siemens Voice over IP solution, or other custom applications with the same solution you use for your mainstream Microsoft Windows applications? Well, soon you will be able to do just that. Did you consider that there may be a gap between what the applications experts need to know to support their business and what the operations team is delivering? The solution is simple and is expected this summer.

NetIQ is pleased to introduce NetIQ® AppManager® Module Builder – the solution that will extend the coverage of NetIQ AppManager to any Windows application, while simultaneously engaging subject matter experts to allow them to define their products and processes.

To use the simple, wizard-style user interface that guides your experts through an interview about the aspects of the application to be monitored, NetIQ AppManager Module Builder requires no knowledge of NetIQ AppManager! Once complete, a package is created for the NetIQ AppManager Administrator to generate a set of Knowledge Scripts®, including discovery, at the click of a button. You will no longer need to wait for development to create a commercially available module or rely on services to develop something for your in-house, custom applications.

As an extension of NetIQ's 13 years of Windows management experience, NetIQ AppManager Module Builder will allow you easily to ensure that nothing in your environment slips through the cracks. In an economic environment where organizations are routinely being asked to justify their investments and teams must communicate and work more efficiently, knowing that you have covered all your bases and can quickly report on your results can go a long way to ensuring your success.

To learn more about our progress on NetIQ AppManager Module Builder and its time-to-market, or to share thoughts about this and other NetIQ solutions, join Qmunity. Ask the experts and learn directly from your peers in the industry.

Want to be an early adopter? Contact your account manager to submit your name to the NetIQ Joint Developer Program to receive a preview of NetIQ AppManager Module Builder. The benefits for you include:

• Getting a head start in working with the latest technology.
• Having your feedback and suggestions directly impact product development.
• Partnering with NetIQ in groundbreaking technology.
• Accessing the NetIQ AppManager Module Builder product team directly.

Figure 2: The NetIQ AppManager Module Builder wizard walks the subject matter expert through a series of simple steps, beginning with auto-identifying and listing applications that reside on a given system eligible for support.

Figure 3: Once the subject matter expert (SME) has completed the NetIQ AppManager Module Builder wizard steps, he or she can easily review selections prior to submitting the request to build to the NetIQ AppManager Administrator.

Customer Talk

This Blog's for You

Qmunity blogs are designed to introduce you to the real people behind NetIQ – to put a face to our subject matter experts. The blogs will provide timely updates on everything NetIQ from cool product and service updates and helpful tips to industry news and analysis. We'll bring you commentary, posts, and interviews with key NetIQ-ers, users, and industry specialists – with more focus on best practices and less focus on marketing lingo.

For our bloggers, NetIQ is not a job. It's a passion. And that passion spills over into our solutions – enterprise systems and application management, operational VMware management, security and compliance management, and unified communications management. Better still, these blogs are yet one more avenue for reaching out to you with relevant issues that have a real impact on you and your organization. That's why we have made our blogs open to the public, while reserving our forums, notifications, and group exchanges exclusively for Qmunity members.

We have an exciting line-up for you and look forward to adding more blogs in the coming months. At a glance, these are our current blogs for you to bookmark:

	NetIQ Products For a head's ups on product and technology developments, you don't want to miss Chris Pick's insightful blogs, including: Specific use cases for NetIQ products and solutions Noteworthy industry trends in IT management and related disciplines Discussions centered around up-and-coming products, technologies and innovations
Frequent blogger: Chris Pick, CMO & Vice President of Products, NetIQ
	Security Webb Geoff Webb looks fearlessly at the challenges and the rewards associated with security and compliance including: Explosive growth of major data breaches Challenges of remaining compliant with mandates such as PCI DSS Workload reduction for security teams through workflow automation
Main blogger: Geoff Webb, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, NetIQ
	UCMe Erin Anderson delves passionately into discussions about unified communications and serves up straight talk about related topics such as: New vendor offerings and their impact on the network infrastructure The necessity for lifecycle management The relevance of IP Telephony
Main blogger: Erin Anderson, Product Marketing Manager, NetIQ
	Automate This! Travis Greene makes this your one-stop-shop for information about IT Process Automation (ITPA). You can certainly expect: Examples of successful deployments of ITPA tools Lessons learned as more IT organizations advance their deployments Discussions around measurable results and return on investment, as a byproduct of ITPA
Main blogger: Travis Greene, Chief Service Management Strategist, NetIQ
	AppManager Simply put, this blog from Haf Saba is about all things NetIQ AppManager. Those of you who are AppManager customers, sink your teeth into: In-depth discussion about AppManager modules, updates and functionality How-to videos and guides with helpful hints The latest product developments
Main blogger: Haf Saba, Senior Solutions Specialist, Asia-Pacific,NetIQ
	Managing VMware It's time to get real about managing across virtual deployments. Join Criss Scruggs for discussions on: Importance of performance baselines pre- and post-migration Quality of Experience through systems and application response time Managing critical applications Automation across the hybrid infrastructure
Main blogger: Criss Scruggs, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, NetIQ

If you are a NetIQ customer but you're not a Qmunity member, we invite you to join. Sign up today and start receiving RSS feeds for the areas and topics which most benefit you.

We look forward to seeing you on Qmunity!

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