Visualizing changes

Kurt Hansel works to improve JPMorgan Chase’s application-mapping and change-management processes at the credit trading division’s capacity-on-demand application infrastructure is JPMorgan Chase in Lowell, Mass.

The credit trading division’s capacity-on-demand application infrastructure is far from JPMorgan Chase’s only New Data Center project. Separately, Kurt Hansel is toiling away at improving JPMorgan Chase’s application-mapping and change-management processes at the company’s Lowell, Mass., location.

Hansel, assistant vice president, deployed software a couple of years ago that helps his department better track changes in configurations for JPMorgan Chase’s cash online application. Relicore’s Clarity software visualizes the dependencies among the application and infrastructure components within Hansel’s production environment. (Symantec recently announced plans to acquire Relicore.)

Recent upgrades to the software, such as its multimode configuration data-collection features, make it easier for Hansel to spot changes in application and network configurations and determine the culprit of performance problems. For example, the most recent enhancements to the software offer real-time alerting to changes made.

“Relicore will immediately tell us if a specific file change within an application is the cause for an error that, say, came up in our Tivoli console,” Hansel says. “It will show the servers and their dependencies that may be impacted by the error, which cuts our problem diagnosis time way down.”

Clarity tracks the firm’s online platform, which supports real-time cash transactions. Because Clarity can spot the network components that an application needs, Hansel uses the software to also track network configuration changes directly supporting this application. By quickly identifying where changes have been made in his network, the software helps him speed mean time to repair for network – and ultimately application – problems, he says.

Hansel has yet to integrate Clarity with Tivoli Enterprise Console, which would enable him to see Relicore alerts in his main management console, because of his own time constraints, but he says the software speeds the time it takes to roll out new cash online applications. The software, being used in isolation now, would improve application configuration accuracy and overall performance in time, he says.

“When building out servers, there are always human errors. With Clarity, we eliminate the chance of that,” he explains. “Considering what we have to get done in the day and the demand on our applications, there isn’t enough time for manual work. Automation is the only way to keep up.”