Preventing Management Frameworkitis

Ever attend a meeting where participants miscommunicate because they have different frames of reference?  We call this frameworkitis - which left untreated can cause severe application performance dysfunction.

The problem is that enterprise IT and carrier network folks use different management frameworks, and failure to understand each others' world view leads to frameworkitis. We suggest the cure for this ailment is for enterprise network managers to migrate from network frameworks (designed for carriers not enterprises) to the more comprehensive and flexible ITIL framework. ITIL provides a common frame of reference that puts everyone on the same page.

Network industry groups like ITU, IETF and OMG have developed network frameworks to establish a common understanding of the service quality required to legitimately bill for a network service.  Network frameworks use familiar IT terms like "application" and "user interface", but these terms apply to software running the network - not the software running over the network.

A good example of a network framework is the ITU's Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) framework for interconnecting heterogeneous telecommunication networks and integrating management tools from different manufacturers into a single service management fabric.  The TMN framework defines four functional management layers: business, service, network and element.  Element in this case refers to the element manager for devices from a single vendor (e.g., Cisco switches).

The TMN network management layer framework is referred by the acronym FCAPS, which stands for Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance and Security.  Other network-based management frameworks include OMG's Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and an important group of standards from the IETF like SNMP, ICMP, NETCONF, and IPFIX (open standard version of Cisco's NetFlow) - although the IETF has never called these elements of a framework.

IT frameworks are much more numerous than their network framework counterparts.  In fact, the IT Service Management Forum recently published a guide to "the leading 22" IT management frameworks. The absence of contextual links between the IT and network views in these frameworks is striking. Not one network framework is even mentioned in the book, nor does it mention other useful sets of standards such as Common Information Model (CIM) which was developed by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF).

The big gorilla in the IT framework scene is the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).  By big we mean REALLY big.  We actually weighed the latest 5 volumes (version 3) on a bathroom scale, and it topped out at a whopping 11.25 pounds.  The fundamental purpose of ITIL is to manage IT as a service in support of a business.  ITIL describes a very comprehensive set of processes that create IT service.  At the highest level these processes include strategy, design, transition, operation, and continual service improvement. 

ITIL began in the UK and was soon adopted by many European enterprises as the IT management bible.  It is now spreading across the US in a very big way.  If it hasn't happened yet, you will soon be asked to learn and adopt ITIL in your job.  In either case, it is a sound foundation for planning an application performance management strategy. 

But ITIL is a daunting set of concepts to learn and put into use. In upcoming blog episodes we will reduce ITIL to its essentials and describe a practical approach to application performance management.