Critical Success Factors

In order to obtain the necessary funding a compelling Business Case should be prepared showing how the benefits of effective Event Management can far outweigh the costs – giving a positive return on investment.

One of the most important CSFs is achieving the correct level of filtering. This is complicated by the fact that the significance of events changes. For example, a user logging into a system today is normal, but if that user leaves the organization and tries to log in it is a security breach.

There are three keys to the correct level of filtering, as follows:

• Integrate Event Management into all Service Management processes where feasible. This will ensure that only the events significant to these processes are reported.
• Design new services with Event Management in mind (this is discussed in detail in paragraph 4.1.10).
• Trial and error. No matter how thoroughly Event Management is prepared, there will be classes of events that are not properly filtered. Event Management must therefore include a formal process to evaluate the effectiveness of filtering.

Proper planning is needed for the rollout of the monitoring agent software across the entire IT Infrastructure. This should be regarded as a project with realistic timescales and adequate resources being allocated and protected throughout the duration of the project.

Risks

The key risks are really those already mentioned above: failure to obtain adequate funding; ensuring the correct level of filtering; and failure to maintain momentum in rolling out the necessary monitoring agents across the IT Infrastructure. If any of these risks is not addressed it could adversely impact on the success of Event Management.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 902