Business Value
Dashboards (BVDs) could be a significant step forward for IT Infrastructure and
Operations (I&O) in making that connection with the business, finally
getting perceived as a contributor, not just a cost. Unlike executive dashboards, which have
typically tried to present purely IT metrics in a coherent fashion to senior
management, BVDs typically are much more closely aligned to particular lines of
business. It helps me to think of the
difference between ‘January uptime, 98%’ (Executive Dashboard) and ‘January
Uptime 98%, Lost revenue for APAC, $1.5m (BVD)’
The latter has
certain key differences:
-
It needs
the APAC region to provide a link between downtime and the effect on their
revenue
-
The need
for and desirability for that metric starts with the APAC region, not I&O
-
A lot of
information, much of it non-I&O data, might be needed to define that relationship
Those differences
define for me why the BVD needs to be distinct from any product in any specific
area of I&O. Chances are that
defining those business metrics starting from an I&O tool will mean the
metric is geared towards where that I&O tool is comfortable: network
metrics for a network tool; storage metrics for a storage tool; server metrics
for a traditional capacity tool. To have
an effective BVD, the need is for the definition to start with the business
metric, not be ‘steered’ in this way by what I&O tools can offer.
For this reason I see
non-specific tools as being best suited to being the BVD. As a provider of a capacity management tool,
I don’t see doing that as our role.
That’s not to say we won’t play a critical role in what is displayed,
but more about that later.
There are plenty of
good contenders already out there. I’ve
seen excellent examples of BVDs using tools like Splunk and Tableau. They are specialists in being that ‘dashboards
of dashboards’, being the one screen at the top level, pulling together a huge
range of disparate data. As well as
capacity data from our athene® software, I’ve seen BVDs with business data such
as calls made, orders placed, geographical data, Twitter feeds and more, all
heavily dependent on the business application and requirement. Such dashboard tools are so well established,
they also tend to have experienced users, skilled in the techniques needed to
manipulate and display the data required by the business units.
Thinking of my own
space, that’s not a job for which a capacity analyst is necessarily
qualified. Their specialization is
capacity, and they will concentrate on feeding the right capacity data into
the BVD in the right way. Capacity
management and planning are specialist skills.
Practitioners need to understand what is required of them from the
business and then have the very difficult
job of translating that into data requirements that they can feed forward into
a BVD, but the broader composition of the BVD picture is outside their remit if
they are to retain sufficient focus on capacity issues.
My preference is to
see BVDs provided by dashboard specialists and capacity issues handled by capacity
specialists. I want to see capacity
tools that deliver the best capacity management support they can and not be diluted
by attempts to be all things to all people.
Capacity analysts need capacity dashboards, these are not BVDs, but
a feature of the capacity tools an analyst uses.
To create the best
BVD with the best capacity information as desired within it, this needs to be a
two-way street. Yes, capacity analysts
need to understand how to map the desired business metric onto the data they
have available, then present data back to the BVD that enables it to show
performance against that target. Of
course, critical in doing that is having the right data available – traditional
capacity management.
In addition, the
capacity analyst still has a job to do outside any consideration of the
BVD. To do this effectively means taking
business data and using that as part of their day to day capacity management:
correlating business data against observed capacity metrics; understanding how
variance in one affects the other; building a pool of data that enables
forecasting of capacity to be more accurately attuned to business change.
It's for this reason
that with our own software we have concentrated on providing an open interface to
exchange data between athene® and a huge range of other products. Dashboards and BVDs are the latest
incarnation of where we both deliver and receive information. Our role is not to be the BVD, but to feed it
and support it, to help bridge that gap between I&O and be seen
as a contributor to business goals, not just a cost.
Andrew Smith
Chief Executive Officer
