In July of 2011, Gartner announced they were retiring their Magic Quadrant for IT Event Correlation and Analysis. Gartner wrote, “New technologies are influencing and fundamentally reshaping what has been know as the IT event correlation and analysis market, so Gartner has decided to retire the ECA Magic Quadrant.” As Zenoss is one of those new technology companies, I completely agree with Gartner’s analysis, yet I am sad to see the ECA Magic Quadrant being retired.
Fundamentally, the challenges associated with event correlation and analysis (ECA) has gotten worse within today’s dynamic datacenter paradigm. These days it seems that IT Operations is resigned to live in a see of red with their event consoles filled with critical events and endless alerts. Old techniques such as event suppression and rules based correlation simply cannot keep up with new technologies such as x86, storage, and network virtualization.
Some may argue that the solution lies within costly Application Performance Management (APM), the emerging Business Service Management (BSM) market, or within unproven predictive IT analytics solutions. In any case, the answer must combine proven monitoring, definitive eventing, a detailed understanding of the relationship between silos within the dynamic infrastructure, and be useable for IT Operations, internal or external customers, and other executives within your organization.
How can you accomplish this task?
- Properly instrumenting the entire IT infrastructure stack including applications, compute, storage, networking, and virtualization
- Maintaining a dynamic model that integrates with your traditional ITSM CMDB
- Moving from elemental based monitoring and eventing to a service construct that maintains the service definition within a dynamic infrastructure
- Providing an automated eventing platform that integrates with critical ITSM systems including service desk and change control
At Zenoss, our mission is to Transform your IT Operations to meet the challenges of today’s dynamic IT infrastructure, to help you maintain your legacy IT infrastructure, and to provide a no vendor-lock-in view of whatever the future might hold. Proactive IT operations require a new and innovative approach that satisfies the needs of your company while turning IT Operations into heroes.
Next week, I will be presenting a 30-minute webinar, Eliminating Event Storms in IT Operations. I invite you to join us next Wednesday to see how you can stop living in a sea of red and start proactively managing your IT operations.
