Page 8 - July August 2014

8 Telecom Reseller
July/August 2014
Why We Need to Apply Situational

Inc.
Connect and Communicate
Awareness to IT Risk Management

Why buy new when we can repair
RLet’s rethink how and what we monitor.
your existing equipment?
ICH
Instead of monitoring speciic technologies
each with their own toolset monitor situations
-By Charley Rich, VP of Product propagating across networks, servers and
Management at Nastel (www. applications, and thereby eliminate silos. IT
A1’s repair services will save you money over buying nastel.com)
Galgorithmically analyzes events acquired across
new equipment. Our technicians are fully trained in the all sources, searching for patterns that together
planning, coniguration, programming
rowing reliance on IT systems
describe a situation. hey look at IT event data
and installation of telecom systems.
has underscored the gap between technological innovation and our ability
the same way stock market traders search data for patterns.
to prevent cascading failures. Too oten we IT practitioners become heroes by preventing
In addition, all repairs are backed by an witness monitoring and safety systems fail. hese problems before users are afected. Like the Coast
additional two-year warranty.
failures start small, but unnoticed or viewed Guard, IT will be able to look at all event data
one-dimensionally, they may cascade into serious together and communicate a story that guides
problems. From the Deepwater Horizon oil spill specialists to take action. Humanity has spent ISO 9001
800.797.2983
and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
thousands of years learning how to manage risk www.a1teletronics.com
to the server-based telephony and uniied in the physical world. It’s time we bring these AscdiNatd The global alliance of the it channel
As an Independent Distributor, A1 Teletronics, Inc. is not afiliated with the manufacturers of the products it sells except as expressly noted
communications (UC) systems businesses need insights to the digital world.
otherwise. Any and all trademark rights associated with the manufacturers’ names and products are owned by the respective manufacturers.
to function, it’s obvious that we can improve at
risk management.
Connect.
To prevent IT-related catastrophes, we must
evolve from a siloed risk management approach
to uniied performance analysis (UPA). As we
make this shit, we need to take a cue from
“Situational Awareness,” a model of thinking
favored by military strategists.
How the Coast Guard Manages Risk
hrough Situational Awareness
According to the U.S. Coast Guard Team
Coordination Training Student Guide,
“Situational Awareness is the ability to identify,
process, and comprehend the critical elements
of information about what is happening to the
team with regards to the mission. More simply,
it’s knowing what is going on around you.” SA
can mean the diference between life and death,
and it should become the model for IT risk
management.
SA training teaches Coast Guard team
members to identify clues that something is
amiss. Among many sources of “data,” deviation
from standard procedures always indicates that
SA has been compromised. Team members
share knowledge of everyone’s goals, tasks
and responsibilities in order to recognize
these deviations. Everyone is responsible for
identifying, analyzing, communicating and addressing abnormalities.

he Parallel for IT
Whereas the Coast Guard requires every team
member to practice SA, in IT, we normally
divide monitoring responsibilities. Practitioners
all monitor diferent parts of their systems with
minimal communication and information
sharing. No one can see the overall picture.
To emulate SA, we need to move to a uniied
performance analysis strategy (UPA).
Like SA, UPA is a way of looking at data
from all sources to form one consistent picture
at
te
el
l
e
ep
ph
h
o
of application performance. UPA allows an
M
Mo
or
r
e
et
th
h
a
an
nj
j
u
us
s
t
ta
on
ne.
IT Operations generalist to look at the overall
system and see each part in relation to all others.
Like SA, UPA doesn’t care who or what collects M Series telephones keep your customers connected to stream sound, place
the data. he Coast Guard doesn’t care who
spots a procedural mistake, and likewise in
UPA, instrumentation is abstracted from the and receive calls over their own cell network, charge phones and tablets, and
analysis of information. We have a narrative
access the Internet via a built-in Wi-Fi access point. Call +1.719.368.6544,
of how an IT system is supposed to work, and
when it’s misbehaving, we need an analysis of the write info@teledex.com, or visit www.teledex.com for product and pricing
abnormality to get back on track.
details and to request a sample phone.

he New IT Hero
To evolve IT risk management and prevent
catastrophe, IT should adapt the approach
of Situational Awareness through uniied
performance analysis. UPA can mitigate the
risks of cascading failures and improve business
availability by reducing the frequency and Accept no substitutes.
duration of outages and preventing false alarms.
By addressing the entire problem instead of
treating single dimensions, IT can capture early ©2014 Cetis, Inc. Product specifications and descriptions in this document subject to change without notice. CetisM, Teledex are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cetis, Inc.
indicators of a problem long before it cascades
into a failure.

p1-28_TR_July/August_2014.indd 8
20/08/2014 22:05