As companies complete their "phase 1" ITSM implementations successfully, a common question is "what's next?". "What will produce the most value, and what can I implement quickly and successfully?" IT Operations Management, specifically Event Management, may very well be the answer.
What is Event Management?
First let's define an event. ITIL defines it as "a change of state that has significance for the management of a CI or IT Service". Examples of common events might be "CPU on Server123 is 99%" or "Application XYZ is down". Events can be generated by technology monitoring tools, application logs, intrusion detection systems, environmental systems, ATM machines, mobile devices, railroad crossings, you name it.
Event Management is "the process responsible for managing events through the lifecycle". In more basic terms, "let's consolidate all enterprise events into a single place and try to make sense of this mess!".
What are some key benefits?
Provide visibility and early indication of potential incidents. By consolidating all of our events into a single place, we are effectively "turning the lights on". Operations, service desk analysts, and technicians can look at a single pane of glass to get the relevant data.
Speed time to response and resolution. By putting people on the same page, we can work to end the cycle of suffering caused by sev-1 conference bridges. Effective event management ends the blame game, since the data is there for all to see.
Understand the business impact of technology failures. By correlating events to the service they impact, we can prioritize our response, ensuring our valuable resources are used most effectively.
Reduce the noise in the service desk. Create fewer, more meaningful incidents. Adding the event management correlation layer prior to incident creation helps us work smarter. CDW presented at Knowledge 14, and touted a >30% reduction in incident volume by implementing an Event Management solution.
Increase automation. Once we understand the events, we can start moving towards automating the response.
Why put Event Management on ServiceNow?
Implementing the event management process directly on the ServiceNow platform is a game-changer. Critical ITSM data the event management process needs to be effective is readily available within ServiceNow, and arm's-length away.
Traditional event management applications are forced to work without this supplemental information. If an integration exists with the ITSM system, it's typically weak and comes at a high cost. With Event Management on ServiceNow, integration use cases that took months to implement with traditional tools can take just hours.
Standardizing integrations is another important reason for ServiceNow customers to look at Event Management. Integrating multiple monitoring systems directly with the ServiceNow incident application is costly to maintain, and can result in excessive ticket creation.
Where do I go from here?
The first step is determine the current state around monitoring and event management. What tools do we have? Do we integrate monitoring with incident management? Do we understand the impact? Does everyone have visibility? Are we being effective?
Solid Event Management applications are available from Evanios and ServiceNow. Both are capable of providing tremendous value, and run directly on the platform.
Evanios provides products and services to help organizations succeed with IT Operations Management. Our Event Management Kickstart service is an excellent way to get rapid return on your investment, regardless of which application is chosen. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions/comments.
