* Is network management really the "Rodney Dangerfield of IT"?
Recently I attended one of Network World’s events, the IT Roadmap: Boston conference and expo.
The show featured eight technology tracks, one of which was network management. Predictably, I made certain I sat in on the discussion around one of my favorite technology markets. And one of Network World’s own newsletter writers Jim Metzler, analyst and vice president at Ashton, Metzler & Associates, moderated the discussion, which I must say initially shocked me a bit.
To start, Metzler referred to network management as being considered more of a necessary evil than an innovative technology, often referred to as the “Rodney Dangerfield of IT” considering the lack of respect the technology area garners. But I should have known Metzler was just setting me up for his stance on how management is the technology that will help enterprise companies become more agile and able to respond to increasing demands and changes in their respective markets.
“There is a sort of negative buzz around network management,” Metzler told attendees. “But I see innovation.”
Technologies, processes and products that help companies respond in a “real-time-enough fashion to threats, opportunities and situations that impact the health and well-being of the organization” represent the wave of innovation in management, Metzler said.
Here I’ll elaborate on just a few of the areas in which Metzler says management is seeing innovation.
* IT automation: The time is here for automation. For years, automation reigned in the mainframe world, but the technology hit a snag in distributed client/server environments. Companies such as BladeLogic Opsware, Opalis and RealOps have made automation in large distributed environments a reality. And not only does today’s automation kick off actions in software and on devices, but also a new breed of tools dubbed run-book automation enable IT staff to automate known fixes to common problems by putting scripts to work.
* Web services and SOA management: Application management is challenging today, never mind when Web services and service-oriented architecture become mainstream. The advantages such as flexibility and agility that the re-usable bits of application code present to IT managers are mirrored by the challenge of managing dynamic elements in a large distributed environment. That’s not to say the big management vendors like IBM and CA or that niche players such as Amberpoint and SOA Software haven’t been working on SOA management. Heck even Cisco has gotten into the SOA management game with its recent Reactivity acquisition.
* Best practices frameworks: The IT Infrastructure Library, or ITIL, has become a common theme among IT managers looking to squeeze inefficiency out of their processes and increase service delivery and customer satisfaction numbers. Still, doubters remain. Several technology purists (ahem, some vendors, but not the majority) don’t see the point of overhauling processes to streamline operations, while those in the know realize that without good processes, tools from vendors will fall flat and IT projects will fail. That’s why several have been working on the next release of the British best practices, ITIL Version 3, set to debut by the end of May.
