Dennis Drogseth
Catching up with Mimic
In a crowded and confused management software marketplace, there are worthwhile products in nooks and crannies that tend to escape the attention of the media and much of the industry overall. One such set of products is simulation...
Are IT managers still looking for MOM?
Management software, like most of high tech, is not only driven by technology, products, marketing, IT requirements and business needs - it’s also driven by fashion.Fashion is in turn driven by the media, which require change and...
Questions of element management
Element management is rarely addressed - perhaps because on the surface its role seems fairly dull, or perhaps because it has the potential to annoy just about everybody. But at the dawn of an age where management systems are...
Demystifying ROI, part 2
Last week's newsletter stressed that doing a "return on investment" analysis is individualized - and from an IT perspective, that's its chief value. While generic approaches, such as calculators, are very useful for getting the ball...
Demystifying ROI
For some reason, folks seem to be paying a lot of attention lately to "return on investment." Perhaps because of the economic slowdown, users are looking for more from management software - more efficient service delivery,...
The best time for planning
I think it’s safe to say that over the last several months, the stock market is sending the wrong signals to IT, as well as to the world at large. Steeped in an aura of panic, the market’s behavior is as irrational as it was 14...
NetQoS defies classification
Analysts are famous for trying to put things in buckets -- but in management software and services that tendency can often prove to be more sophistic than salutary. NetQoS is potentially an innocent victim of this unfortunate, oddly...
Two worlds collide
As many of you know, I have spilled considerable virtual ink in recent months addressing problem-resolution techniques such as root-cause analysis and event correlation. One reason for this emphasis is that automated problem...
The platform lives on
Speculating on the viability of building a new management "framework" -- or a "platform" or a broad-brush network management software set under some other name -- seemed like good theoretical fun. But the question has become more...
Edge enPortal is more than a window
Probably the single most troublesome issue in management software today is the lack of a clear strategic vision across the industry. This leaves users, service providers and vendors collectively adrift among an increasingly ferocious...
Keep up with the Joneses
IT professionals and service providers can learn a lot from looking at the practices, requirements, processes and organizational dynamics of their peers. While it is sometimes counterintuitive to do this -- many IT and...