From the Redbook site available here. Props to Donald Hart, a peer of mine, for getting involved and contributing.

“This Redbook will help you determine if you want to migrate from IBM Tivoli® NetView® version 7 as well as IBM Tivoli Switch Analyzer to Netcool/Precision for IP Networks version 3.6. Comparisons and conclusions will change when future releases of NetView or Netcool/Precision are released.

The first part of the book is written to help the manager and technical leaders to understand the changes and benefits that Netcool/Precision for IP Networks can bring to their solution. The intent is to help you evaluate your own usage of the NetView features and see how they map to the Netcool/Precision features. You can also see the list of additional features that Netcool/Precision offers to help determine if a migration is right for your company at this time.

The second part of the book is written based on years of experience by the team with knowledge of both NetView and Netcool/Precision. The second part will help the technical person work through a systematic approach for migrating from NetView to Netcool/Precision. The second part is not intended to be used by technical people that are just beginning to use Netcool/Precision. It is written for the technical leaders and specialists that will be performing the migration and have the appropriate education or experience to deploy Netcool/Precision. Where there was multiple ways to complete a task, we chose a specific way and documented what we did. Scripts that are written to help with the tasks are documented in appendices as well as available to download from our website as additional material.”

Date: Jan 11th, 2007

Meeting time: 2:00 PM

Meeting location: 4111 Northside Parkway Atlanta, Georgia

Meeting topic: Micromuse/Tivoli Roadmaps; Best Practice on Implementing ITM 6.1; More information on the Tivoli’s CCMDB;

Agenda:

2:00 PM - 2:15 PM - Introductions - David Marques, All

2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Update on Micromuse Roadmap - James Mellinger; Chief Technology Evanglist

3:15 PM - 4:00 PM - Update on Tivoli Security Operations Manager - Richard Telljohann; Tivoli Security Market Manager

4:00 PM - 4:15 PM - Break

4:15 PM - 5:15 PM - ITM 6.1 Implementation Best Practices - John Willis, Capital Software

5:15 PM - 5:45 PM - Dinner (provided by IBM)

5:45 PM - 7:00 PM - IBM ITSM Strategy - Rich Johnston - CCMDB Product Manager

7:00 PM - 7:15 PM - Open Discussion and Q&A

7:15 PM Get together at a local establishment.

Summary:

Should be one of the best user group meetings ever!

Directions:

From the Airport to Lakeside/Hillside (4111 Northside Parkway)
Follow signs to I-85 North, into the city of Atlanta. Continue on I-85, which will join I-75 going north into the heart of the city (this is the downtown connector). Follow the downtown connector all the way up through the city until I-75 and I-85 split again. At this point, take I-75 (toward Chattanooga and Marietta), which leads to the right. From I-75, take Exit 256 (Mt. Paran Road) and turn left at the red light at the bottom of the exit ramp. Move IMMEDIATELY into the far right lane, and turn right. Stay in this far right lane, as it is the turn lane into the IBM complex.

Atlanta Network and Systems Management Technical User Group
————————————————————-

January Meeting Announcement
————————————————

Wondering what’s going on with NerveCenter? OpenService has a new President, Mike Schmitt, who brings renewed interest in NerveCenter. Come find out what Mike and OpenService have in mind for NerveCenter at the January ANSMTUG meeting. OpenService will present its new and expanded vision for event correlation and how NerveCenter is at the center of enterprise event management. This vision includes additional inputs to include applications, databases, SOAP, WMI along with network/systems management and security devices. AutoTrader will host.

OpenService (http://www.openservice.com) is sponsoring the food and drink for the meeting. Please help us out by RSVPing (see link below) by Monday, January 15th, if you intend to attend so we can provide a headcount to order the food and drink.

What is the ANSMTUG all about?
————————————————–

The Atlanta Network and Systems Management Technical User Group was created to foster collaboration between administrators, architects, engineers, and operators of applications and tools used to manage and monitor networks, systems, applications, services, and business activities.

There are numerous enterprise and service provider companies in the Atlanta area who use best of breed applications and tools from companies such as IBM Tivoli/Micromuse (Netcool), OpenService (NerveCenter), Quest Software (Foglight), Hewlett-Packard (OpenView), EMC/SMARTS (InCharge), Concord Communications, InfoVista, etc. The intent of the group is not to be completely aligned with any particular vendor or solution, but rather focus on network and systems management applications and tools in general. There will likely be more focus on a select handful of vendor solutions than others, but this will be driven by the users and not the vendors.

Meeting Details
———————

Cost: Free!
Date: Wednesday, January 17th, 2007
Time: 7:00PM to 9:00(ish) PM
Host: AutoTrader
Location: 5775 Peachtree Dunwoody Rd., Bldg C, Atlanta, GA 30342

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=5775+Peachtree+Dunwoody+Rd+Atlanta,+GA+30342&ie=UTF8&z=15&om=1

Parking: Free

Refreshments: Food and drinks provided by OpenService.

Please RSVP by Monday, January 15th, 2007 to rsvp@ansmtug.org

—————————————————————
Scott W. Parker | James 1:19
scottwparker@gmail.com |
—————————————————————

I guess it’s time to contribute a traditional new year look back / look ahead type post to the blog here. It’s been about a year now since I started this and overall I’m relatively pleased with how it’s gone. My goals for this blog were to serve as an outlet to get stuff out of my head, diaries, yellow stickies and hundreds of .txt file memos and mash them all up into something usable by anyone working on similar engagements, projects or problems in IT and Business Service Management.

In the beginning, when my time was more openly available, I spent considerable time getting thoughts out in original content postings. As time became scarcer, I found the del.iciio.us tagging plug in for Firefox and daily links posting feature very useful for sharing links to content of interest for those reading my blog. I enjoy writing the original content, offering commentary and opinions where I feel I can contribute usefully and sharing what I’m working on professionally. I look forward to continuing series based topical postings and a focus on sharing best practices and methodologies for success in IT and Business Service Management. Critiquing myself, I’ve got to find a way to say more with less and keep the post size to a more consumable length. At least that’s what the blogging best practices say. Brevity in anything has never been a strong suit for me, especially with technical things I’ve got a passion for.

Something that disappoints many technical bloggers is the lack of collaborative communication. Technical blogs, and ones like mine that specialize in a niche area like IT and Business Service Management, are very much one way communication still. I wish more would join in the conversations and share their own thoughts, ideas, criticisms, etc. I really wanted to learn from a broader audience and find out what works and doesn’t work in a multitude of industries, verticals and scenarios. I hope more people will comment and share in 2007.

Blog statistics and search engine key words landing on my blog are interesting to review and many conclusions can be drawn.

• Since I started this blog almost one year ago, I’ve seen over 300K hits from over 16K unique visitors.
• I’ve had just over 200 postings and over 80 comments.
• Technorati says I’m ranked 265,343rd and I have 31 links to my blog from 14 different blogs.
• Google search queries landing on my blog indicate there’s a strong desire for the things I’m posting about or could be posting about.
• Based on the volumes of search queries I see coming to my blog, why don’t people ask for stuff? Why aren’t they communicating? I’d be happy to point people in the right direction or post content in a certain area if enough people see value in it. Is it easier to hope that a Goooooooogle result many pages down will be the golden nugget they desire? Wish more people would join in the conversation, comment, ask for help, etc.
• People searching for things related to vendor products, technology, how to’s, troubleshooting problems, etc. makes me believe vendors don’t do a good enough job making this kind of stuff available internally for their customers. (poor documentation, poor support, poor training, poor knowledge bases, poor internal search, etc.)
• Search queries can give insight into M&A activities

I hope you’ve enjoyed what I’ve done in the past year and I look forward to continuing to blog on business and IT topics in 2007.

• Val IT
  Val IT is a governance framework that consists of a set of guiding principles, and a number of processes conforming to those principles that are further defined as a set of key management practices.

  The Val IT framework will be supported by publications

  (tags: governance management technology IT business)