Regardles of what kind of IT Operations shop you work in, if you’re interested in any of the best practices frameworks, ITSM, IT Operations, continuous improvement, network and systems monitoring and management, etc. you should look at what Microsoft is talking about in their new Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI).
Get past the “dynamic” buzz word and what the trade magazines and analysts will talk about in the next week with new and renamed products. Look into this and absorb the information. Start with the DSI Core Principles and the DSI whitepaper. Should other vendors be thinking the same way? (I know we are) Does it make sense? Is it believable? Implementable?
There’s some great content in some of their initial documents. See these: System Definition Model, Model Based Management and Health Modeling.
I know it’s possible to implement similar things with other tools or internally develop new capabilities natively. Some of the stuff in the Health Modeling document reminded me of what I did in the past in OpenService NerveCenter with state models and with a home grown CMDB of sorts for service management.
How much should we as vendors be providing out of the box versus expecting you to develop it yourself? Should every system, application, router, firewall, etc. come with a higher layer management and operations model that plugs into these automated, dynamic frameworks? Should we be federating and integrating at that level instead of selling you just another specialized GUI or tool just for that component or solution? Could it be as easy as consuming some web service, XML document, etc. in an SOA environment??
Stop Doug, stop….the wife wants to watch Survivor… š