“IT has always been viewed as a 24/7 organization, but we haven’t had the tools to be a 24/7 organization,” said Raj Sabhlok, President of ManageEngine, in his presentation, “Becoming  Real-Time IT Organization” at the 2013 ManageEngine User Conference in Las Vegas.

Sabhlok launched the conference discussing how ManageEngine’s tools have been evolving to deliver real-time IT. How can IT organizations be quicker? How can IT organizations meet and shorten service levels through network management, server and application management, IT help desk and windows management, SIEM and compliance?

The keys to real-time IT, said Sabhlok, are:

  • The right data at the right time
  • Not just any data, but actionable data
  • Instructions on what is wrong or what to do
  • Data should be able to reduce my mean time to resolution (MTTR)

The Road to Real-Time IT

Both ManageEngine and the IT industry have evolved to achieve the goal of real-time IT. As Sabhlok points out:

Physical, virtual, and cloud management: We now have end-user experience monitoring for cloud apps.

On-demand SaaS solutions: ManageEngine’s help desk software, ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand

Mobility solutions: Just by the sheer fact that you don’t have to be in the office, mobile has allowed for a huge leap to real-time.

“Social IT” for enterprise: With the release of IT Pulse, ManageEngine merged the social experience, with IT collaboration, and real-time IT monitoring. As people in the IT enterprise are engaging, they’re getting alerts as to what’s happening around their IT enterprise. All of it is being done in real-time.

Integrated IT management: ManageEngine’s IT360: integrated IT management suite offers, as the name suggests, a 360 degree view of a single point of truth of your IT operations.

Real-Time IT Means Delivering Actionable Data

While blinking lights and spinning dials showing the health of your network are nice, they don’t provide any information for you to act on should there actually be an issue. IT management software has thankfully grown up offering context to the health of your network, and only giving alerts when an action needs to be taken.

Now that we’re able to measure everything, we’re collecting a lot of data. If the influx is too much for you to handle, set yourself up for success by managing “little data” not Big Data, said Sabhlok. Here are some of his suggestions for building a real-time IT environment:

  • Start by asking what data do we need; what questions are we trying to answer for our business or organization.
  • Seek management tools that not only monitor, but offer “actionable data.”
  • Make sure needs are transparent to IT professionals and users.
  • Use the data you already have first before you go seeking any other data.
  • Use tools that can provide the data and reports that are important to the business.
  • Don’t get distracted by “bells and whistles” of a vendor solution when what you really need are powerful reporting capabilities.
  • Ask vendors if their products can answer the questions your business needs to know.