Adding Business Intelligence on Top of IT Business Solutions

Below is the continuation of the transcript from a Webcast video from InetSoft Technology. The speaker is Mark Flaherty, CMO at InetSoft.

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Bord: Can you show on the whiteboard here what you mean by adding business intelligence on top of IT systems?

Flaherty: Great, sure. So something that our own IT department does is use business intelligence on top of our systems center. Our systems center Operations Manager uses it to manage the health of our IT infrastructure and to monitor it. What we have heard a lot of is that IT pros want more and more robust solutions to be able to analyze the data that’s coming out of their systems centers. So today what they get might be three kind of reports which they can see and print out and all that type of stuff. But what they want to do is get some more useful dashboards where they have got a pictorial representation of what is going on, and they can see where they can actually do some of the ad hoc analysis to answer some of the questions that they have.

Our BI software can easily be configured to read the log files of a systems center. I am just going to whiteboard what that architecture looks like and what we have done. So if you are familiar with a systems center, the way that it's made up is that there are managed servers which collect data on the performance of the IT system. It monitors states of different applications inside the system, the performance metrics, counters, and that type of thing. So really we have got state data and performance data which are captured and they are stored in the operations manager.

Bord: Which is just a big SQL database.

Flaherty: That’s right, yes. And that information then gets trapped for these reports to be created, and that’s trapped in the operations manager database or data warehouse, that information in operational format gets pre-aggregated for these operational reports, these production reports so we have got a data warehouse there. And then these are the reporting services reports generally. So that’s what you have got today.

Now you can layer business intelligence on top of this to get more out of this data that you are collecting. The first thing is that you want to move a subset, the relevant subset of this information into an optimized database that’s in a star schema. So we will call this the operations manager BI data warehouse. From that sort of optimized data warehouse you can then build pre-aggregated cubes. So this is pre-aggregated information that is then easy to analyze and to find trend information through.

What Are Some Other Examples of IT Using Business Intelligence Software to Monitor Its Operations?

Business intelligence (BI) software is extensively used by IT departments to monitor and optimize their operations. Here are some examples of how BI software is applied in IT:

1. Network Performance Monitoring

BI tools are used to monitor network performance metrics such as bandwidth utilization, latency, packet loss, and network availability. Real-time dashboards and reports help IT teams:

• Identify Bottlenecks: Analyze network traffic patterns to identify bottlenecks and optimize network infrastructure.
• Predictive Maintenance: Use historical data and predictive analytics to anticipate network issues and schedule maintenance proactively.
• Capacity Planning: Forecast future network capacity needs based on usage trends and growth projections.

2. IT Service Desk Management

BI software is employed to analyze IT service desk metrics and improve service delivery:

• Ticket Analysis: Track metrics such as ticket volume, resolution time, first-call resolution rate, and customer satisfaction scores.
• Root Cause Analysis: Identify recurring issues and their root causes to implement permanent fixes and reduce incident recurrence.
• SLA Compliance: Monitor service level agreement (SLA) compliance and performance against predefined benchmarks.

3. System and Application Performance Monitoring

BI tools monitor the performance of IT systems and applications across the organization:

• Server Monitoring: Track server CPU usage, memory utilization, disk I/O, and uptime to optimize resource allocation and ensure availability.
• Application Performance: Monitor application response times, transaction volumes, error rates, and user interactions to identify performance bottlenecks and optimize code.
• Database Performance: Analyze database performance metrics such as query execution times, throughput, and indexing efficiency to optimize database operations.

4. Security Monitoring and Compliance

BI software helps IT teams monitor and analyze security events and compliance metrics:

• Security Incident Analysis: Monitor security event logs, intrusion detection/prevention systems, and user behavior analytics to detect and respond to security threats promptly.
• Compliance Reporting: Generate compliance reports to demonstrate adherence to regulatory requirements such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, etc.
• Vulnerability Management: Analyze vulnerability scan results and prioritize remediation efforts based on risk assessment and impact analysis.

5. IT Financial Management

BI tools support IT financial management by providing insights into IT spending and cost optimization:

• Cost Allocation: Allocate IT expenses across departments, projects, or cost centers to track budget utilization and optimize spending.
• Vendor Management: Analyze vendor performance, contract terms, and spending patterns to negotiate better terms and reduce procurement costs.
• ROI Analysis: Measure the return on investment (ROI) of IT initiatives and projects to prioritize investments that deliver the highest business value.

6. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

BI software plays a crucial role in ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery readiness:

• Disaster Recovery Planning: Analyze data replication metrics, backup success rates, and recovery time objectives (RTOs) to ensure data resilience and minimize downtime.
• Incident Response: Monitor incident response metrics, including incident detection times, response times, and resolution effectiveness, to improve incident management processes.

7. IT Project Portfolio Management

BI tools assist in managing IT project portfolios and optimizing project delivery:

• Project Performance Analysis: Track key project metrics such as budget vs. actual costs, project timelines, resource allocation, and milestone achievements.
• Resource Management: Analyze resource utilization, capacity planning, and skills availability to optimize resource allocation across projects.
• Risk Management: Identify project risks and issues early through risk assessment and mitigation strategies based on historical data and predictive analytics.

8. IT Governance and Performance Reporting

BI software enables IT governance and performance reporting to align IT initiatives with business objectives:

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Define and monitor KPIs related to IT governance, service delivery, operational efficiency, and strategic alignment.
• Executive Dashboards: Provide senior management with real-time insights into IT performance, project status, risk exposure, and compliance metrics for informed decision-making.
• Benchmarking: Compare IT performance metrics against industry benchmarks and best practices to identify areas for improvement and innovation.

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