Patent Application
20070282876
The present invention provides techniques for performing the service of comparatively evaluating the complexity of IT management activities associated with technology solutions.
By way of example, in one aspect of the invention, a technique for providing the service of comparatively evaluating the complexity of IT management activities comprises the following steps/operations. At least one candidate technology solution is identified and meta data regarding the candidate solutions such as name, provider, goal, user roles, business purpose, price, date, and other attributes are entered into a database. The complexity of IT management activities associated with each technology solution under evaluation is discovered and quantified utilizing available techniques such as those taught in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/205,972 filed on Aug. 17, 2005. The quantified complexities of the IT management activities under evaluation are stored in a database for subsequent retrieval and reporting, and are associated with the appropriate respective meta data entries in the database. Comparative reporting is performed by receiving a customer communication requesting a comparative report for technology solutions and that meet specific criteria which are used to select a set of technology solution complexity evaluations from the database, and preparing reports containing relative as well as absolute complexity.
The step/operation of selecting a set of technology solution complexity evaluations may comprise selecting technology solution evaluations based on business purpose, price, provider, or any of the various attributes, alone or in combination, which were collected as meta data, associated with the individual solution evaluations, and stored in the database in the preceding steps.
The step/operation of reporting the comparative complexity of the IT management activities under evaluation further may comprise reporting results of the complexity analysis in one or more of a human-readable format and a machine-readable format.
Further, the step/operation of reporting the complexities of the IT management activities under evaluation may further comprise producing a report comparing such complexity in one of a variety of dimensions, including but not limited to aggregate complexity, parameter complexity, execution complexity, and memory complexity. Still further, the step/operation of reporting the IT management activity complexities of the systems under evaluation may further comprise producing a report via an algorithm that computes a relative financial impact of a specified configuration process.
Advantageously, the steps/operation of the invention may be useable to enable prospective purchasers of computing systems to help assess the relative costs of competing technologies. They may also be useable to help developers of technology to improve their products.
As will be illustratively described below, principles of the present invention provide techniques for providing a service of comparatively quantitatively evaluating the complexity of IT management activities. By way of example, one such IT management activity might consist of configuring a computing system. Configuring a computer system may encompass any process via which any of the system's structure, component inventory, topology, or operational parameters are persistently modified by a human operator or system administrator. Examples include, but are not limited to, installing, provisioning, upgrading, or decommissioning software or hardware; adjusting settings on two or more systems so that they are able to communicate with each other; adjusting system parameters to alter system performance or availability; and repairing damage to a system's state resulting from a security incident or component failure.
IT management activity complexity refers to the degree of simplicity or difficulty perceived by human operators, system administrators, or users who attempt to perform IT management tasks associated with a technology solution. Examples of IT management activities include, but are not limited to system installation, system configuration, release management, change management, problem management, security management, capacity management, and availability management. Quantification of a computer system's IT management activity complexity is useful across a broad set of computing-related disciplines including, but not limited to, computing system architecture, design, and implementation; implementation of automated system management; packaging and pricing of computing-related services such as outsourcing services; product selection; sales and marketing; and development of system operations/administration training programs.
Principles of the present invention provide a system and methods for producing a standard, reproducible comparative evaluation of the complexity of IT management activities. Note that we illustratively define a system's configuration as all state, parameter settings, options, and controls that affect the behavior, functionality, performance, and non-functional attributes of a computing system. We also illustratively define IT management activity complexity as the degree of simplicity or difficulty perceived by human operators, system administrators, users, or automated tools that attempt to install, configure, address problems, and otherwise manage the Information Technology aspects of a technical solution to achieve specific IT management goals.
Furthermore, principles of the present invention address the problem of objectively and reproducibly quantifying comparative IT management activity complexity of computing systems, which has not been done previously in the domain of distributed and enterprise computing systems. In accordance with illustrative embodiments, a system and methods are provided for solving the above problem based on a benchmarking perspective, which provides quantitative, reproducible, objective results that can be compared across systems, all at a low operational cost. We propose illustrative methods for collecting IT management activity-related data from a computing system that enable the quantification of such activity complexity in an objective, reproducible, low cost manner.
As will be further described below in detail, an illustrative architecture of the invention includes a metadata collector, a complexity data collector, a selection criteria collector, a complexity analyzer, a database, a comparative analyzer, and a reporter, each corresponding to a phase in the overall process of quantifying the complexity of IT management activities associated with a technical solution. It is to be understood that while each of these phases are described below as discrete phases, the various phases can potentially overlap (e.g., a continuous system that collects new configuration-related data while analyzing older data).
In a first data collection phase, one or more solutions to be evaluated are identified and specific IT management activities associated with said solutions are chosen for complexity evaluation. Meta data regarding both the solutions and the evaluations are captured and stored in a database. Solution meta data includes information regarding the solutions to be evaluated. Examples of solution meta data may include, but are not limited to, solution name, provider, version, price, business need which the target system fulfills, and system requirements. Evaluation meta data includes information regarding the evaluations conducted. Examples of evaluation meta data may include, but are not limited to, date of evaluation, scenario goals, and user roles to be examined.
For purposes of illustration only, the IBM data base product DB2 may be identified as a technical solution of interest. The IT management activity of configuring the database solution could be chosen for complexity evaluation. Solution meta data might include “Relational Database”, “IBM”, “DB2” “version 8.2” thus capturing the business purpose, vendor, name, and version of the technical solution whose IT management activities will be evaluated. Evaluation meta data might include “Configuration”, “dbadmin” “Apr. 1, 2006”, “minimal footprint”, “Linux”, thereby capturing the IT management activity to be evaluated for complexity, the role of associated human administrators, the date of evaluation, the goal of the configuration activity, and requirements or constraints of the activity.
In a further illustrative example, the Oracle database product Oracle may be identified as a technical solution of interest. The IT management activity of configuring the database solution could be chosen for complexity evaluation. Solution meta data might include “Relational Database”, “Oracle Corp.”, “Oracle” “version 9” thus capturing the business purpose, vendor, name, and version of the technical solution whose IT management activities will be evaluated. Evaluation meta data might include “Configuration”, “dbadmin” “Apr. 1, 2006”, “minimal footprint”, “Linux”, thereby capturing the IT management activity to be evaluated for complexity, the role of associated human administrators, the date of evaluation, the goal of the configuration activity, and requirements or constraints of the activity.
Further, in the data collection and evaluation phase, IT management activity related data is collected and evaluated utilizing any of a number of available techniques such as those taught in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/205,972 filed on Aug. 17, 2005. The results of the evaluation are then stored in a database and associated with meta data pertaining to the appropriate system under test, also stored in a database as previously described.
Finally, a last phase in the configuration complexity evaluation process involves the reporter component of the system. This component enables service customers to enter requests for comparative configuration complexity reports, comprises selecting those systems under test which meet any of a number of criteria which can be ascertained from examination of meta data stored in the database, prepares a report comparing the configuration complexity of the respective selected systems under test and communicates said report back to the customer. It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that communications with the customer may take many forms including but not limited to telephone conversations, electronic mail exchanges, traditional mail exchanges, and internet browser facilitated exchanges such as Web Services enabled transactions.
Referring initially to
As depicted, administrator 100 identifies a candidate technology solution 101 whose IT management activities are to be evaluated. The technology solution comprises the hardware components and software components that make up the computing system. Administrator 100 further chooses at least one IT management activity 101 associated with the candidate technology solution. This IT management activity will be the subject of the complexity evaluation. The technology solution under evaluation is configured and maintained by its human administration staff 100, comprising one or more human operators/administrators or users operating in an administrative capacity.
Meta data collector 103 is used by human administration staff to enter and store solution and evaluation meta data into database 106. IT management activity data collection 104 is performed by a procedure utilizing any of a number of available techniques, such as those taught by U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/205,972 filed on Aug. 17, 2005 to generate a set of collected data. The collected data is consumed by complexity analyzer 105, which also utilizes available techniques such as those taught by U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/205,972 filed on Aug. 17, 2005 to derive a set of low-level configuration complexity measures through analysis of the configuration-related data. The metrics and scores produced by the complexity analyzer are associated with meta data regarding the appropriate system under test collected by metadata collector 103 and stored in database 106.
Referring now to
Criteria for the selection of items to comparatively report on are collected by Selection processor 210. Selection processor 210 interrogates the database 212 using the collected criteria and extracts appropriate complexity metrics and metadata 214 to be used in the comparative analysis and report preparation.
Control is then passed to Comparative Analyzer 220 which examines complexity metrics 214 and ranks metrics instances, representative of complexity evaluations of IT management activities associated with technology solutions, against each other. Rankings, metrics, and metadata are input to Report Preparation 230 which generates a comparative report. Such comparative report may represent data in textual form, graphical form, or a combination of both textual and graphical form. Comparative report 240 may optionally be stored in Report Repository 250. Comparative report may optionally be communicated to Customer 200 by any of a variety of means including, but not limited to electronic transmission, electronic file transfer, printed report, local display, portable storage media such as CD, diskette, and UBS enabled storage device.
As an illustrative example, a customer might navigate to a service provider's web site, open a web page which prompts the customer for selection criteria for comparative report generation. The customer might then enter the business purpose criteria of “Relational Database” and an IT management activity of “Configuration”. These criteria are communicated to Selection processor 210 which formulates a query for all complexity evaluations whose solution metadata contains a business purpose of “Relational Database” and whose evaluation meta contains an IT management activity name of “Configuration”. Continuing the illustrative example described regarding
It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that Customer 200 could include internal as well as external customers. For example customer 200 could be an employee of the comparative evaluation service provider whose responsibility is to pre-package comparative complexity evaluation reports, and potentially to populate a catalog of such reports from which external customers could choose.
Accordingly, as illustratively explained above, embodiments of the invention describe a service providing comparative, reproducible evaluation of the complexity of technology solutions. The methods may advantageously include techniques for collection of metadata regarding both the solutions and evaluations, conducting complexity evaluations of specific IT management activities associated with technology solutions utilizing available methods such as those described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/205,972 filed on Aug. 17, 2005, collection of selection criteria for purposes of comparison, comparative analysis, and reporting of such selected comparative IT management activity complexities. The system may advantageously include a collector of solution and evaluation meta data, a complexity data collector, a database, a complexity analyzer, a selection criteria collector, a comparative analyzer, and a reporter. The collector of solution and evaluation meta data will collect information regarding technology solutions and the complexity evaluations of specific IT management activities associated with the solutions and store the meta data in a database. The complexity data collector may gather IT management activity information from traces of actual technology solution processes or from the set of exposed controls on a technical solution. The complexity analyzer may use the collected IT management activity data to compute quantitative measures of low-level aspects of IT management activity complexity as well as high-level predictions of human-perceived complexity and will store such quantitative measures and predictions in a database. The selection criteria collector will extract desired previously collected complexity metrics from the database. The comparative analyzer will rate the comparative complexity of IT management activities associated with selected technology solutions. Finally, the reporter may produce human-readable and machine-readable comparative reports of the complexity of IT management activities associated with selected technology solutions.
Furthermore, while the illustrative embodiments above describe performance of steps/operations of the invention being performed in an automated manner, the invention is not so limited. That is, by way of further example, collecting technology solution data, analyzing such data, and reporting complexity may be performed entirely manually, or with a mix of manual activities, automation, and computer-based tools (such as using spreadsheets for the analysis or manually collecting IT management activity data and feeding it to an automated comparative complexity analyzer ).
Although illustrative embodiments of the present invention have been described herein with reference to the accompanying drawings, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to those precise embodiments, and that various other changes and modifications may be made by one skilled in the art without departing from the scope or spirit of the invention.
