May, 2008
by Prentice Frazier
The Greater Atlanta CMG (GACMG) Spring Conference occurred on Wednesday, May 7 2008. Bob Chaney (Treasurer, GACMG) kicked off the meeting, gave opening remarks, and facilitated introduction of attendees. Afterwards he turned the meeting over to the vendor sponsor, BMC Software.
Neil Blagrave of BMC presented on "BMC Software Solutions Overview - Business Service Management (BSM)". BSM focuses on performance, availability and optimization of IT processes or environments. Management is handled from a business perspective via best practice IT processes, automated technology management, and a shared view of how IT supports business priorities. A configuration management database (CMDB) is at the center of the strategy proposed by BMC.
After a break and random small group chats, Bill Chaney sparked discussions with his presentation on "ITIL - The DT Way". It was obvious that the implementation of ITIL varies from company to company and DT (Delta Technology) was no different. The group discussed common pitfalls and challenges with ITIL implementations. Out of necessity, Incident and Change Management are usually covered by organizations first. However tools leveraged to support the processes vary and, if not managed properly, are often part of the implementation pitfalls. Problem Management seems to occur in an ad hoc fashion, while Configuration Management can be hindered due to the seemingly insurmountable challenge of creating a CMDB. Not to fear, auto discovery tools can play a pivotal role in meeting this challenge. Release Management tends to have a software delivery focus, but a great opportunity exists to leverage this process for management of the infrastructure as well. Service level and capacity management have good focus in most companies represented, but there is an opportunity to mature the processes. DR (Disaster Recovery) and Business Continuity are managed as distinct activities in organizations. A question was raised in regards to whether or not they should be managed in an integrated fashion. However, there was a lot of support to keep the activities separate.
After lunch, Neil Blagrave gave a presentation on "What's New in Mainframe and Distributed Systems Capacity Management". According to Gartner, organizations must develop long term plans for a Performance Management Database (PMDB) and set up a dedicated performance and capacity planning group. BMC's Atrium product will manage data (PMDB) needed for business driven capacity management. During the presentation, someone began a tangential discussion regarding the trend of virtual servers being run on mainframes. This trend is mainly targeting web servers for migration to mainframe environments. For instance, one company has 1200 Linux servers on their mainframe and another is working on a pilot. However, some distributed applications will not support the virtual server on mainframe configuration. If you are interested in hearing more about this topic, attend the next IBM zLinux Council meeting in Atlanta on June 6, 2008.
Last but not least, Juliana Hughes presented on the American Merchant Calendar (AMC). Each quarter of the AMC Calendar has a 4-week month, followed by a 5-week month, followed by a 4-week month. To find out more information on how this calendar is structured and used please Google "4-5-4 calendar".