An important aspect of deploying the Operations Center solution involves who is going to actually use it and what do they need. Consider the following questions:
Who are your end users? Will operators who currently manage data from third-party management systems use Operations Center? Will managers of service level agreements use the SLA management tools? Do executives need a reporting tool?
What functionality do they need? The functionality needed depends upon the user’s role in the organization. Operators who actively manage and administer systems should be able to do operations on alarms. Managers who administer service level agreements should be able to create and manage SLAs. Executives who monitor data, whether alarms or SLAs, will need reporting capabilities.
For more information on functionality in Operations Center, see Section 2.0, Managing Your Technology and Services with Operations Center.
How will they access data from the Operations Center server? How to access data is dependent upon the function that the user wants to accomplish. For monitoring and operations, the user could use either the Operations Center console or the dashboard. For reporting, users can use the dashboard.
For more information, see Section 3.2, Operations Center Tools.
When must the Operations Center server be available? Typically, applications used by large numbers of employees in a corporation require a high level of availability. Applications with a smaller user base can require a high level of availability based on the profile of the typical application user.
For example, a smaller user base of executives, partners in a company, or customers could require maximum system availability. These users would find it unacceptable to have no access to the system in the event of a hardware or software failure until the problem is resolved.
How quickly do users need data? Of course, everyone wants everything as fast as possible. You should consider how quickly users must realistically access Operations Center and balance those needs with the costs of the systems and infrastructure needed to promote faster access.
How will you ensure that data is protected? No user wants to lose any important data. So you should consider back ups for Operations Center server. You also should consider security to protect data from unauthorized users. For more information on security in Operations Center, see the Operations Center 5.0 Security Management Guide.