it business intelligence technical overview

IT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE Technical Overview

Specialists in IT Business Intelligence

TECHNICAL OVERVIEW: IT Business Intelligence2

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TRANSPARENCY BETWEENIT AND BUSINESS

TRANSPARENCY,OVERVIEW AND INSIGHT

IT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE – STEP BY STEP

IT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE– THE TOOLBOX

CONTENTS

Most companies struggle

to translate IT spending

into business value

3 TECHNICAL OVERVIEW: IT Business Intelligence

4 IT Business Intelligence: WHITEPAPER

A RELATION OFTEN

OVERLOOKED


IT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE - ITBI™ Most companies struggle to translate IT spending into higher revenues

or alternatively reduce IT spending by changing business processes or

user demand and behaviour. This struggle is often caused by a lack of

understanding of how IT supports the business and how business im-

pacts the IT infrastructure.

Two things are required to gain such an understanding. The first is to

create transparency in the relation between IT and the business. By

showing directly the business value and the cost of IT you can openly

share how IT resources is actually utilized. This again will show how

business activities are reflected in IT activities and vice versa. The second

requirement is to implement a common language between IT and the

business, most likely in financial units of Euros or Dollars, and to avoid

technical terms like GB, MHz etc.

ITBI™ from SMT Data merges information from IT and the business

and creates transparency of the relation between the two, to ultimate-

ly support the business objectives of the organization.

IT systems generate a wealth of technical data describing anything

from hardware utilization to user activity or service levels. A main-

frame has more than 100,000 points of measurement and a Windows

server more than 2,500, all recorded continuously.

Even medium IT installations register many million rows and columns

of measurements every single day. Operational real time monitors

use this data to evaluate the actual state, often against standard

thresholds. The very same data, however, can be used for creating

valuable information at all organizational levels.

TRANSPARENCY BETWEENIT AND BUSINESS

HIGHLIGHTS

Any business constantly produces and stores a

wealth of data.

Data is only valuable when turned into useful

information.

Conventional business intelligence tend to

neglect even the most basic data from the IT

system itself.

DATA

INFORMATION

A NEW LOOK

IT Business Intelligence: WHITEPAPER 6

To transform such technical details into useful information requires

massive data reduction as well as data refinement and the coupling of

data from other sources, often organizational or application related,

to create new information. ITBI™ delivers standard data collection

interfaces to all conventional IT platforms in order to provide quick

implementation and a rapid return on investment.

ITBI™ from SMT Data includes more than 200,000 active sets of rules

and policies for reducing and refining the collected standard IT meas-

urements. The rules- and policy-engine is called the SMT/Dictionary

and this is the essence of SMT Data’s vast experience from many years

dedicated to this line of work.

The extracted information is stored in the flexible SMT/Transparency

Grid, which is prepared for easy addition of company specific data like

business activity, organizational data and budgets. This combination

of technical and business-related data sources makes ITBI™ informa-

tion extremely valuable across the entire organization.

Finally, SMT Data provides a state-of-the-art user interface for reporting

and drill-down analysis, including dashboards on PC, tablets or smart-

phones and Web Portals for dynamic reports published on intranet or

extranet. Advanced users are able to easily design and create their own

reports.

From unsorted data

into structured

and comprehensible

decision support



SUPPORT FOR ALL


ITBI™ provides IT top management with information for decision-

making and for understanding and conveying the relation between IT

and the business.

ITBI™ also delivers business management information concerning IT

service and costs by application, business area, system and department

making it easy to optimize business demand and user behaviour.

ITBI™ also supports IT procurement in its efforts to plan for investments

and budgets as well as to distribute IT costs across business areas

according to IT usage.

Within IT operations using ITBI™ guides senior technicians and mid-

dle management in the area of ITILs IT Service Delivery with regards

to Capacity Management, Service Level Management, Performance

Management, Demand Management and IT Financial Management.

Finally, within the development community ITBI™ allows application

responsible managers to easily spot growth or service threshold viola-

tions within their individual area of interest.

ITBI™ Summary

ITBI™ creates transparency between IT and the business by automati-

cally gathering raw technical data, combining it with organizational

and financial data and presenting the resulting information at differ-

ent organizational levels and to different stakeholders. The common

and consolidated ITBI™ data warehouse delivers valuable information

at the strategic CxO level, tactical management level and at the opera-

tional or technical level. All are using the same and single data source

for information, so we call it “One Truth”.

HIGHLIGHTS

IT BI supports the IT man-agement with informa-

tion for decision making and conveying the value

of IT.

ITBI supports the top management with insight into the relation and value

creation between IT and business.

ITBI supports procure-ment in its effort to plan

capacity and distribute costs.

SUPPORT FOR IT

SUPPORT FOR TOP MANAGEMENT

SUPPORT FOR PROCUREMENT

TRANSPARENCY,OVERVIEW AND INSIGHT


ITBI™ focuses on analysis, planning and decision support, transforming

extreme amounts of detailed technical data - plus individual business

data - into structured and comprehensible executive information.

The customer should expect:

• Quickinstallationduetopre-definedinterfacesandSMT/Dictionarysettings

• High-speeddatacollectionduetothepre-defineddatafiltrationandreduction

• FastbenefitandROIduetopre-defineddatarecognitionandstandardreporting

• Low-effortexpansionpossibilitiesduetothecentralrules-andpolicyengine

A new, common

language, based on a

sublime dictionary



THE PROCESS


THE SMT/DICTIONARY ITBI™ data flow and handling is controlled from a

central control program, the SMT/Dictionary which

is recognized for its supreme ability to simplify the

management of individual policies to reduce vast

amounts of technical data and to add individual cus-

tomer specific data sources.

ITBI™ INPUT:

Standard IT plus customer specific data sources .

As a standard, SMT Data’s tools for ITBI™ collect data from the most

common IT platforms: Windows (including VMware), UNIX (including

Linux and Solaris), and IBM z/OS mainframes.

Communication to, from and between SMT tools is extremely flexible.

Data can be pulled or pushed at specific times or intervals. Several data

formats can be used, ranging from comma-separated flat files to XML.

This flexibility makes it very easy for SMT tools to interface with new

local data sources.

DATA REDUCTION:

• Data selection

Only data feeds with ITBI™ potential are selected

• Datafiltration

Details without ITBI™ potential are discarded

• Datarefinement

Data is provided with attributes describing its relation to the business

IT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE – STEP BY STEP

local data sources.

Only data feeds with ITBI™ potential are selected

Details without ITBI™ potential are discarded


• Dataaggregation

Data is summarized, averaged etc. according to character and

potential

• Datahistorization

Data is stored at different periods and levels of detail according to age

ITBI™ OUTPUT:

The SMT/TransparencyGrid feeds the ITBI™ B.I. reporting and analysis

tool.

DATA SELECTION

Each IT platform has several logs for different system statistics. The

SMT/Dictionary is pre-configured to read only those with potential

benefit to ITBI™. This is the first and most obvious step in the mas-

sive data reduction necessary to handle the amount of data logged by

large IT installations.

The standard SMT/Dictionary settings can be altered to expand the

number of data feeds according to customer requirements.


DATA FILTRATION

The amounts of collected data from the selected sources are dramati-

cally reduced by filtering out data fields (columns) with limited value

for ITBI™. The SMT/Dictionary is pre-configured to reduce all standard

data feeds this way. This complex and detailed selection is based on

SMT Data’s vast experience and is absolutely unique.

The standard SMT/Dictionary settings can be altered to expand the

number of selected columns according to customer requirements.

DATA REFINEMENT

The flexibility built into the SMT Dictionary makes it easy to include

information from customer or local data sources in order to refine and

add value to the standard input data, for example:

• Measurements indicating business volumes (i.e. number of new

accounts) can often be gathered from existing user applications and

are easily included in the standard SMT data flow. The added value

is obvious: capacity planning is done according to business volumes

and server load or cost can be reported per business process etc.

• AllSMTtoolsusetablestotranslatemeasuredtechnicallabelsinto

local naming conventions readily understood at all levels. In this

way user-IDs or server names may be converted to departments /

transaction or process names to applications / technical CPU- or

disk-units to monetary cost-units etc.

• Serversfromwhichdatamustbecollectedmaybedefinedmanu-

ally, but in larger installations it is easier to read the definitions

from an existing source e.g. asset or configuration management

database.

The list of data refinement examples could go on and on. Existing cus-

tomers have shown an incredible amount of creativity and innovation

in adding value to their ITBI™ solutions.


DATA AGGREGATION

Yet another way to reduce the initial amount of data is to abandon

the extremely small time intervals used for real time monitoring. SMT

tools are using intervals of 10 minutes to 1 hour for the most detailed

information. Experience shows that smaller intervals does not make

sense for ITBI™ solutions.

Measurements are summarized or averaged, and in many cases mini-

mum and maximum values are stored as well. Each single measure-

ment is treated according to pre-defined SMT/Dictionary rules based

on SMT Data’s vast experience. These standard rules are of course eas-

ily changed through the SMT/Dictionary.

In addition to time-based aggregation, SMT/Dictionary also supports

other forms of aggregation, such as aggregating together all the minor

processes, using below a certain resource threshold.

DATA HISTORIZATION

The last step in the massive data reduction controlled by the SMT/Dic-

tionary is the historization. As the stored information grows older, cer-

tain measurements are no longer useful - and even 1-hour intervals pro-

vide unnecessary detail after a while. The ITBI™ information is stored

at different levels of detail according to age. For each level, the SMT/

Dictionary controls the amount of detail and the retention period.


Moving from reporting intervals of 1 hour to 1 day or even 1 month, as

the collected data ages, especially averaged values become meaning-

less. Introducing “time zones” solves this problem.

One zone could be the daily business peak, another the daily business

opening hours and a third would cover all remaining periods. In this

way sums and averages still make sense - and three values is stored per

day or month for each piece of information. SMT Data consultants assist

customers in evaluating and adjusting the default SMT/Dictionary set-

tings which control retention periods and time zones, according to local

customer requirements.

ITBI™ output

Standard input data is reduced to between 1/1,000 and 1/1,000,000 of

its original volume (depending on the data source). Few (if any) con-

ventional BI systems have to deal with volumes and reduction chal-

lenges of this magnitude. In fact, SMT Data’s large customers claim

that only SMT tools have been able to handle the amount of statistical

data created by their IT systems.


The massive data reduction is necessary in order to present a manage-

able data volume and data structure to the reporting and analysis tool.

Terabytes of raw data in complex structures are transformed to Mega-

bytes of useful information, stored in the SMT/TransparencyGrid.

The data model used for the SMT/TransparencyGrid was designed

with the necessary flexibility to properly support the inclusion of indi-

vidual and local information - both as measures and dimensions.

This allows information to be sought out and presented according to

customer specific naming conventions for organizational units, busi-

ness applications etc.

ITBI™reporting

The reporting is done through a genuine business intelligence inter-

face. This ensures the smart, user-friendly drag-and-drop report crea-

tion as well as drill-down and analysis possibilities, which modern

users of high-class reporting and analysis systems have grown accus-

tomed to.

The dynamic standard reports contain a number of pull-down-menus

displaying dimensions to choose from like time periods, organization-

al units or business applications etc. In this way one dynamic report

may correspond to hundreds of specific reports, according to individu-

al user selections from the pull-down-menus. This functionality solves

one of IT reporting’s most difficult challenges: it reduces the burden

of report creation and maintenance with several factors, leaving more

time to analyse the report information.

The following example shows how one cost report covers multiple

combinations of date intervals, business systems and environments:

TRANSPARENCY GRIDTRANSPARENCY GRID

The time and skills

NOT needed always

come as a surprise



EASY INSTALLATION


SMT DATA’S ITBI™ TOOLS IT Business Intelligence (ITBI™) consists of products and

services. The products include:

HIGHLIGHTS

The actual installation of SMT software is a matter of hours, and full produc-

tion is then only 1 to 3 weeks away.

Data actuality and validity checks protect the SMT tools, and even the rare

error only requires a re-run of the affected data.

The use of ITBI™ from SMT Data constantly in-

spire users to create new valuable combinations of information from IT

and business.

FAST

SMOOTH

INSPIRATIONAL

IT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE– THE TOOLBOX


SMT/ITBI™ FOUNDATION

The SMT/ITBI Foundation provides you with a web portal using BI

functionality to visualize the myriad of information, stored in the

SMT/TransparencyGrid, in a simple and manageable way. Each user

can create personalized reports by selecting combinations of dimen-

sions from drop-down menus.

With a few mouse clicks it is possible to move from overview to detail

through drill-down functions within the individual reports.

SMT PRODUCT SUITE

The SMT Product Suite is based on the SMT Data “Law Book”, which

describes how to collect, select, refine, aggregate and historize infor-

mation from IBM z/OS mainframe as well as Windows, VMware, UNIX,

and Linux; the unique reporting facilities creates a long-needed trans-

parency. Customers with outsourced IT operations benefit from the so-

lution by optimizing the outsourcing costs through “monitoring” the

provider’s optimization efforts.

ITBI™ Transparency Suite

Collects and historizes information from applications on all platforms

with a focus on resource consumption, bottlenecks, volumes per busi-

ness system. Combined with organizational input, cost distribution

policies and information from other SMT products this can be used to

distribute IT costs on business areas according to consumption of IT

resources. The result is a unique overview and transparency of IT usage

in your organization as a whole, in your business applications, for your

workload license charges and with regard to IT costs in general.


PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND OPERATION

The time and skills NOT needed to install SMT tools always take new

customers by surprise. The actual software installation a few hours - the

customization needed to produce meaningful reports with local cus-

tomized naming conventions normally takes another 1 - 2 working days

depending on installation complexity and information availability.

The follow-on “test” period, which is actually used for verification of

local customization, sometimes lasts for up to 2 - 3 weeks. But SMT

tools are in full production 1 to 3 weeks after the product installation

begins. Daily operation is then smooth and stable. Even with local

customer additions, there are no problems with double updates,

missing data, handling of re-runs etc. Data actuality and validity

checks ensure high data quality. And should an error eventually oc-

cur, the affected update can simply be re-run without rollback or

other time consuming preparations.

SOLUTION MAINTENANCE AND DEVELOPMENT

Once an ITBI™ solution is in production, the transparency it creates

will inspire the various users to further exploit the enormous po-

tential of combining information from IT and Business. With flex-

ible input controls, superior data handling and smooth report

creation, SMT tools has led to many innovative local solutions in

cases where customers needed improved transparency. Mapping IT

measurements against business activity - or translating technical

units into cost units - makes the resulting information comprehen-

sible at all levels, virtually creating a common language for IT and

business. The diverse user base plays a major part in the success of

SMT Data’s ITBI™ solutions - depending on different organizational

units to keep “their” input (i.e. naming conventions) up to date

is no problem since they benefit from the resulting information

themselves.

Frequent addition of new customer-specific and value adding in-

novations does not go unnoticed. SMT solutions tend to become


central and recognized sources of transparency, overview and

insight with a high profile within the organization. Luckily, the

success is not too hard to handle since the on-going innovation is

possible with a surprisingly low effort through the central control

features of the SMT/Dictionary.

SMT DATA AS AN INDEPENDENT PARTNER

Many customers work closely together with SMT Data consultants

as the optimal way to assist or relieve local resources. And if local re-

sources are no longer at hand (often after outsourcing) it might be con-

sidered “smart-sourcing” to use SMT Data as an independent partner.

In order to optimize and standardize such customer requirements,

SMT Data has developed a range of ITBI™ Professional Services. The

ITBI™ services include:

• Productinstallation

• Productcustomization

• Productmaintenance

• Individualproductadd-ons

• Tasksourcing(individualtasksout-sourcedtoSMTData)

• Managedservices(entireprocessout-sourcedtoSMTData)

• PeriodicOptimizationAudits(SMTDatareviewsthecustomersite’s

cost saving or service optimization potentials and present the result

at a management level)

• ITBI™Implementation(selectedproducts,servicesandprocesses)

ITBI™ TIME LINE

An implemented ITBI™ solution is rarely static. Existing solutions are

expanded continuously according to the innovation it inspires among

its broad variety of users. However, the standard interfaces and setup

from SMT Data make sure that an ITBI™ solution will start proving its

worth already before the first full month of data collection.

CONTACT

HEAD OFFICE:

SMT Data A/SHarbour House

Sundkrogsgade 21 DK-2100 Copenhagen

Denmark

Phone: +45 3962 8887Fax:+45 3962 9687

Sales: [email protected]:[email protected]

Website: www.smtdata.com

SMT Data, Benelux:[email protected]

SMT Data, Denmark:[email protected]

SMT Data, Germany:[email protected]

SMT Data, Norway:[email protected]

SMT Data, Spain:[email protected]

SMT Data, Sweden:[email protected]

SMT Data, UK:[email protected]

IT business intelligence creates complete transparency at the relation between IT and business.

And in the process it not only facilitates vast savings and huge going in efficiency. It also builds

a common language between people who speak in terabytes per second and those who see the

world in millions of Euros per quarter.

We have written and printed a magazine full of examples of what IT BI can help business achieve.

We’d love to send one, because it ‘s all good news

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