Monitoring and Proactivity - How to keep your systems up, running and available.

Russ Levanway — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:13:00 GMT

Monitoring

Proactive vs. Reactive

In the world of Information Technology (IT), there are two primary models of support. Most companies are accustomed to a break/fix model, where a computer or software system goes down and it is necessary to pay an IT specialist to get they system restored to normal functionality. This model has serious limitations. First, you are paying your IT specialist while you are down. The longer your downtime, the more you pay. Second, while a critical system is down, your business is probably losing productivity and money.

Instead of taking this reactionary break/fix approach, what if your IT infrastructure is maintained on a proactive basis? Instead of paying your IT provider when the system is down, what if you paid a fixed monthly fee to keep your systems up? In so doing, you shift the burden of minimizing downtime to your IT provider. If they have to devote a day of tech time to bring a system back up without additional pay, their inclination will be to do what is necessary to catch problems before they start.

Does this sound unrealistic? Actually, it is not, and the new industry standard model for IT support is a proactive, fixed cost approach. This is called Managed Services.

Becoming Proactive through Monitoring

There are many elements to a proactive approach to IT support. One of the cornerstones of the proactive model is systems monitoring via what is called a “monitor set.” A monitor set is a grouping of alerts that are designed to notify your IT staff of a software or hardware incident. For example, a monitor set designed to watch your e-mail server would check to see if the server is up and responding to connections from other email servers, if web access to email is up and running, if there is enough space on the servers hard drive, if the spam filter is running, and if the email database is running. If there are any issues, the monitor will send an alert to an IT person responsible for fixing the problem.

Monitors can be configured based on certain thresholds. For example, if you have less than 10% of free space on your hard drive, or if your antivirus software is more than 10 days out of date, an alert can be generated and sent to your IT staff. Also, in some instances, monitors can be configured to catch the early warnings before a system goes down. With the information from a monitor, your IT staff may be able to prevent a downtime incident from even occurring.

Of course, no matter what model you have, there is going to be some downtime and outages. Software has bugs, and it crashes occasionally. Systems slow down over time due to aging hardware and newer software with heftier requirements. Hardware, especially hard drives, can suddenly fail and leave you in the lurch. An extended power outage may bring your systems to a halt. But if you can reduce your downtime by 50% or more, and shift the cost burden of downtime to your IT provider, wouldn’t that be a great deal for your business?

Russ Levanway is the CEO of TekTegrity, Inc, an IT Strategies and Management firm based in San Luis Obispo, California. TekTegrity provides premium IT services to businesses, government, education, and non-profit organizations. For more information about TekTegrity, go to www.tektegrity.com

Technology in Business : break/fix

Monitoring and Proactivity - How to keep your systems up, running and available.