Dashboards called a key to net mgmt.

IT executives are finding dashboards that let them quickly gauge the effect of interrelated events and take corrective action can make staff more productive and keep key systems humming.

According to Forrester Research estimates, companies could reduce IT budgets by as much as 30% with integrated management dashboards that link critical data from infrastructure monitoring software, application portfolio management and project management tools.

Creating such an automated dashboard is a priority for Arun DeSouza, chief information security officer at Inergy Automotive Systems in Troy, Mich. DeSouza recently gained an additional title - manager of global service assurance - that requires he better track IT service levels.

"It is really important for an IT department to measure what you deliver and to show improvements in services over time," DeSouza says. "Even if the business units don't completely understand the technologies underneath what you are measuring, they appreciate the measure of IT performance."

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IT executives are finding dashboards that let them quickly gauge the effect of interrelated events and take corrective action can make staff more productive and keep key systems humming.

According to Forrester Research estimates, companies could reduce IT budgets by as much as 30% with integrated management dashboards that link critical data from infrastructure monitoring software, application portfolio management and project management tools.

Creating such an automated dashboard is a priority for Arun DeSouza, chief information security officer at Inergy Automotive Systems in Troy, Mich. DeSouza recently gained an additional title - manager of global service assurance - that requires he better track IT service levels.

"It is really important for an IT department to measure what you deliver and to show improvements in services over time," DeSouza says. "Even if the business units don't completely understand the technologies underneath what you are measuring, they appreciate the measure of IT performance."

As IT executives make an effort to run their departments more like a business than a cost center, they need information that helps qualify the business consequences of events such as application latency and server downtime. "IT is starting to think about the metrics that tell us if our business is running well," says Bill Gassman, a research director at Gartner.

To get there, IT is migrating from static dashboards that have had to be updated manually to automated systems that draw data more frequently and from a wider range of sources. Some systems are homegrown, others are packaged offerings from vendors such as BMC Software, CA, Cognos, Hyperion, HP and IBM.

At the same time, the trend toward more advanced business monitoring is spurring new partnerships among systems management and business intelligence vendors. HP's DecisionCenter software - a product announced last week that helps IT managers plan IT capacity and projects with business performance in mind - is integrated with Business Objects, for example.

DeSouza is among IT users making the switch from static, in-house developed dashboards to an "automated super-dashboard" that he expects will help his department change its service delivery approach to better support the business.

"We used to focus mostly on measuring the network metrics. Now we track more financial indicators, and we still want to do a measure of customer satisfaction with key projects, as well as help desk response time and speed of resolution," DeSouza says.

Billboard style

One of the biggest challenges for users is identifying the appropriate metrics to track. A big reason dashboard projects fail is too much information, Gassman says. If a dashboard has more than five metrics, experiment to see which metrics really affect performance. "Everything else you should start whittling away because it just becomes a distraction," he says.

Equally important is not becoming over-reliant on a dashboard and assuming that because a graphical indicator isn't flashing a warning sign, everything is OK, says James Kritcher, vice president of IT at White Electronic Designs in Phoenix. He keeps tabs on multiple special-purpose dashboards that track help desk statistics, system availability, project portfolios and service-level agreement compliance.