* MetLife works with CA Wily for best practice adoption
For many IT managers, best practice adoption happens separate from their technology and tool adoption.
For instance, the processes laid out in the IT Infrastructure Library appeal to some IT shops such as Toyota Financial Services because of their vendor-agnostic trait.
But for James Vertino, assistant vice president at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, or MetLife, adopting best practices worked best while working closely with one of his vendors, CA Wily. Vertino, who presented last week at CA World in Las Vegas, in 2006 headed up a project to adopt the tenets of the company’s Introscope Capability Maturity Model (ICMM), a play on the industry standard.
Vertino told session attendees that with some 400 applications to monitor for performance and availability, his organization was looking to move from a reactive stance to a proactive, predictive state. And while Vertino uses Wily Introscope for real-time monitoring, he had several other tools in place, such as Quest Software for database monitoring, that he was not willing to part with for the sake of getting processes in place.
“We wanted our process adoption to be vendor-agnostic. CA is partnering with us to use other vendors’ tools that we already have in place, but helping us with the processes. Process consistency is key to streamlined operations, the tools, not so much,” Vertino said. “The processes dictate the right tool at the right time and make it much clearer what it is you need.”
Vertino reported that the ICMM helped his organization adopt diagnostic and troubleshooting processes that would tap the tools and technology in place. MetLife, he said, wanted to create a pocket of excellence within IT that the more than 4,500 employees could access when needed. About 10 people have dedicated themselves to this process Center of Excellence and the company to start has focused today on improving the availability, reliability, scalability and performance of 30 key applications.
“We were tired of doing minor improvements across 400 applications. We wanted to see dramatic improvements so we homed in on 30 key applications,” Vertino explained. The Center of Excellence also provides help across MetLife by teaching the ICMM model and putting its processes to use upon request. For instance, if IT or business groups need help with the standard installation of a tool or custom configuration of tools, the Center of Excellence offers such tasks as a service. The process experts will also provide performance baseline statistics, perform analytics and problem diagnostics, and work on repeated production incidents, among other things.
Vertino said his organization has reached a ICMM Level of two on a scale of five and is already seeing results.
“We will never prevent 100% of problems but you can control your reaction to them and improve on how you follow up on problems,” he said.
