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As the world IT seems to rediscover so basics, but essentials, concepts like governance, user satisfaction and performance indicators, existing applications conception model confirms us in an intellectual process of rationalization and globalizing consolidation.

In fact, how to guarantee the global vision of an IT ecosystem, dynamic by definition, changing but predictable, stable but so imperfect only by our intervention ?

Wouldn't it be this lack of a common basis of conception which today prevents these applications from delivering this hypervision ?

We think it is indeed ! However, what could appear like criticism against great conceptors of products like Nagios, Cacti, GLPI and so many others, quite the contrary are not. Efforts made by these communities and their successes have been the components which, melt in our boiling cauldron, gave us the recipe which appears to us as the solution.

One common modeling pour the whole IT ecosystem, that's the challenge to take up !

This model exists thanks to DMTF works through the CIM (Common Information Model) standard. CIM defines an object model describing the main entities of an IT system and its business components. Core model and Common model will be at the basis of our model implementation. CIM model extension capabilities, through the use of Extensions schemas, will be a true asset for providing new features.

CIM Model
CIM Model

 

What would be then the mandatory features for having a global vision of the IT ecosystem ?

An IT ecosystem is first of all composed of an hardware architecture which goal is to provide the support for business rules processing and ways of communications. This architecture must be finely identified and supervised or its availability and its control may be altered. These are the goals of both modules HYPERVISION and INVENTORY.

The HYPERVISION module will be in charge of the following operations:

  • Discovery of hardware entities and provided services through the use of robots (no agent installed on hardware entities),
  • Supervision of these entities using pre-established audit and control policies,
  • Communication of collected data to the INVENTORY module,
  • Use of time schedule and media policies for alert management,
  • Rich client application provided for the administration of the module.

The INVENTORY module will be in charge of the following operations:

  • Reception of data from HYPERVISION module et entity uniqueness management,
  • Attribution of entities to human resources with the help of directory module,
  • Localization of entities using gathering of human resources in sites, services, teams, and so on,
  • Accounting allocation depending on analytic and cost elements,
  • Rich client application provided for the administration of the module.

An IT ecosystem is a data automation tool for a human community whose goal is to achieve some work. Interactions between human and the IT ecosystem and so difficulties that may appear are managed by the SUPPORT module. The DIRECTORY module will have a central role for this management.

The SUPPORT module will be in charge of the following operations:

  • Human resources identification for creating incident case (DIRECTORY module),
  • Incident geo-localization (INVENTORY module),
  • Incident description : Way of proceeding, features affected, priority,
  • Incident attribution to on or more human resources,
  • Resolution planning,
  • Incident follow-up to affected human resources (human groups, managers, etc.),
  • Incident global management,
  • Feedback ; knowledge database, time and costs indicators, etc.,
  • Rich client application provided for the administration of the module.

The DIRECTORY module will be in charge of the following operations:

  • Community human resources identification (company, association, etc.),
  • Use of various data sources for the creation of the resources local database,
  • Role assignment and hierarchy management,
  • Rich client application provided for the administration of the module.

An IT ecosystem can not avoid change management and time weigh. That's why the MAINTENANCE module will have to care about intervention management made on the ecosystem.

The MAINTENANCE module will be in charge of the following operations:

  • Maintenance tasks management,
  • Interventions preparation support : description, way of proceeding, tests and validations,
  • Interventions planning depending on similar interventions repository,
  • Rich client application provided for the administration of the module.

The BUSINESS module will care about business processes description (processes, documents, etc.) so as to provide the HYPERVISION module with sufficient knowledge about how to supervise them.

Note that this module should be only addressed in a second phase of the project. The BUSINESS module will be in charge of the following operations :

  • Business processes description : entities involved, documents evolution,
  • Supply of audit and control point to the HYPVERSION module,
  • Rich client application provided for the administration of the module.

Finally, we'll end by the MANAGEMENT module, control center of all the indicators generated by the other modules. Different processing of these indicators will give important information for the IT ecosystem governance at all responsibility levels.

The BUSINESS module will be in charge of the following operations :

  • Coordination and consolidation of data collected from the other modules,
  • Decision support for the ecosystem financial and functional rationalization,
  • Indicators dashboard about human resources (users, technical manager, IT services, etc.),
  • Rich client application provided for the administration of the module.

Do you think this project is ambitious ?

Wee think it is too ! However, we'll do our best to make it a success like:

  • A clear and shared project management,
  • Use of UML for a clearly formalized and easily accessible analysis,
  • Use of object model conception and well-tried standards (design patterns),
  • Use of wide-spread tools (Java, Eclipse IDE, RCP, Spring framework, etc).
  • Availability for collaborative work (Wiki site, Bug report, user forum, etc).
  • and last but not least, a growing community where everyone will be able to bring his ideas and skills.

Hoping to share this experience with you soon,

EscapeK team
 

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