Service Level Management
Establish and Meet Agreed-upon Service Levels
This discipline maintains and improves IT service quality through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring, and reporting upon IT service achievements and instigation of actions to eradicate poor service – in line with business or cost justification. Through these methods, IT can improve relationships with its customers.
Implementing Service Level Management
To improve alignment of IT with the business, a process must be established to collect, record, and report against service levels that the business cares about. NetIQ AppManager Control Center, AppManager Analysis Center, and ResponseTime Modules provide the foundation to achieve this level of maturity:
Step 1: Establish Business Requirements.A Service Catalog can be established in AppManager Control Center to list the services provided by IT in terms that the business recognizes. Service Map Views can then roll up into the appropriate Service Catalog item. Service Level Requirements are also collected from customers and entered into AppManager Analysis Center.
Step 2: Measure the End-Client Experience.NetIQ provides an extensive set of ResponseTime Modules, which emulate end-user behavior, such as using email, web-based applications, or running desktop applications over a Citrix connection. These modules automatically record data that reveal the service experience that end users encounter. ResponseTime modules are also extremely valuable to the Service Desk in providing advanced warning of incidents before users begin calling, allowing proactive communication that builds the credibility of the IT Organization, even while outages are occurring.
Step 3: Report Service Level Achievement. AppManager Analysis Center provides the capability to not only graphically report data but also to record minimum Service Level Requirements and compare the two so that service level achievement is instantly discernable.
NetIQ Analysis Canter featuring service level achievement reports.
Key Features
- ResponseTime Modules allow monitoring from an end-user perspective through the employment of synthetic transactions, which can pinpoint faults in applications, databases and networks, as well as measure availability of services from a business perspective.
- Collect data efficiently and easily – Benefit from AppManager’s single repository containing all of your management information—both events and performance data—enabling a central view of all servers and resources. This single repository enables efficient and comprehensive reporting with automated distribution via email, Sharepoint dashboards or the AppManager consoles.
- Perform advanced analysis – Use interactive charting to get a sophisticated view of your systems with NetIQ Analysis Center’s OLAP-based performance data warehouse and predictive analysis capabilities.
- Get the broadest and deepest management view of your cross-platform infrastructure – Centrally manage the health, performance, and availability of more than 60 applications across Windows, Unix, Linux, VoIP, and network devices. You can also extend monitoring to a broad range of systems and devices through customized scripts or by using the AppManager SNMP Toolkit.
- Rapidly detect and anticipate impending problems – Use AppManager Performance Profiler to automatically establish normal server profiles and generate alarms when the system detects deviations and/or impending problems.
- Manage your IT infrastructure in a business service context – With AppManager Control Center, you can take advantage of a visual representation of IT resources mapped to business applications or services, enabling you to prioritize problem response. By mapping services to elements, you will understand ownership and headcount for all elements the service depends upon, as well as understand how element failure impacts the service.
- Easily adapt to your unique infrastructure – Customize your solution without learning proprietary languages or technologies with AppManager’s use of industry-standard technologies, such as XML, VBA, Perl, and Java. AppManager also minimizes training costs by using the technologies with which your staff is most familiar.
- Snap in seamlessly with other management products – Integrate AppManager with systems and network management products, such as Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), Micromuse Netcool/OMNIbus, Computer Associates Unicenter, Tivoli Enterprise, HP OpenView Network Node Manager, HP OpenView Operations and Remedy AR System. This single-system view enables more efficient management of your IT environment.
- Scale your architecture to match your business – Robust, flexible architecture enables you to efficiently manage thousands of servers. This allows administrators to manage large server configurations more efficiently.
- Diagnostic Console improves administrator productivity by allowing entry-level operators to perform some high-permission activities without being granted full Windows administration rights, extending their abilities with minimal risk.
