Can Stability and Agility go hand in hand?
Business wants agile IT, fast and flexible. IT operations is all about maintaining stability. Can the two really meet?
An increasing number of IT organisations are facing the challenge to having to accept demands for more flexibility, and thus using SaaS services from the public cloud, internal or external outsourcing etc.
- IT operations is all about coping with change and minimizing the internal effort that it brings, while at the same time being able to assure stability in both core IT infrastructure and the applications performance affecting the delivery to the users. With the new version of op5 Monitor (5.5) we continue to focus on this challenge. We add and enhance features to support the distributed monitoring architecture that is absolutely necessary for today’s agile IT operations. We also add new features for how to present the monitoring data so that the value of the information can be useful for more people within the organization. The possibility to create service delivery groups enables a full view of the value chain from the hardware level, OS, VMs, apps all the way out to the user experience, transparent to if its internally produced or integrated with external service.
Software Stability
Software stability is more then just stable code. In the open source world this part of the solution are often achieved by adding internal resources that take care of updates, patches, documentation and all the important parts that makes the difference between a good code vs. a great solution. However Stability is also the actual product architecture i.e. what combinations of software packages (open or not) that builds up the solution. In the argument of monitoring and achieving a full picture of the service delivery – it is the same thing in making a long term stable product – its the total package that counts.
Solution Stability
We would like to make the argument that stability should be more then this – it is also about ease of use. We are often asked to replace traditional legacy systems such as HP Open View, IBM Tivoli, CA Unicenter, BMC Patrol, as well as the broken down open source projects with a miss mash of different solutions. One very common reason for why the projects die is the “killed by the expert who left” syndrom. There are two common problems:
- The project has been built on a too complicated monitoring system, trying to measure everything technically possible. This risk to only achieve massive amount of data that only a very limited (if any) number of people can make sense off.
- Maintaining and administrating the solution requires highly skilled experts, and when they get sick or leave the company – the solution quickly falls apart.
We strongly advocate that it much more useful to have 10 solid checkpoints on any monitored device or service that you can trust and understand, than having 200 checks that generates uncertain quality and very high demands on who can make sense of the information produced.
Interesting note on this is a quote from Gartner last week were they claim that the new generation X (the me me me, now now now generation) will on average have had 14 jobs by the age of 38. This fact might suggest that it can be a good idea to not plan for monitoring systems or solutions that requires access expert help on a regular basis.
Agility
In op5 Monitor agility is delivered by default in the Open Source core. Using open API’s and following standards for databases and general programming. Being agile, suggests that anyone in the IT department should be able to add monitoring to a new application, device, virtual machine or SaaS service, whether placed internally or in the cloud. All within minutes, not months. This should be possible without the need for certification programs or weeks of training. This is possible when having direct access to a professional support to call if and when you need help or assistance to set a up a new monitoring service.
I think this is important – and I think these problems will escalate as IT becomes more distributed both in were and how application are being produced and applications being consumed. The need for IT organisations to provide stability as well as being agile, will grow – and grow fast.
I hope you take a look at Monitor v5.5 – we are mighty proud of it 
Cheers / Jan
