Business Continuity Management (BCM) planning focuses on maintaining business processes continuity. It is one of the most important factors to sustain an organization before and after an interruption. BCM is the key component of Comprehensive Emergency Action Plan. The corporates which do not have a proper business continuity plan cannot survive in case of an interruption. It is very beneficial to adopt a good plan for the long marathons.
Thanks to business continuity plan, critical IT applications and infrastructures are made available with respect to functionality and recovery processes are supported.
Monitoring IT Infrastructure
It is necessary to real-time monitor servers, network components, and software and data bases within IT infrastructure. This monitoring may become more critical with respect to business continuity and audit aspect.
To measure instantaneous performance of infrastructure elements and test their availability; agent and non-agent methods can be preferred based on use area such as:
* Server sources: CPU, RAM, disc area, network utilization etc.
* Bandwidth use of network elements
* Web applications performance
1.1.2. Monitoring the Applications
Besides IT infrastructure monitoring, it is also important to monitor applications which run on these systems in order to achieve business continuity. Monitoring critical business processes and performance and accessibility at different layers of these processes will help to figure out failures which cannot be identified by monitoring only IT infrastructure.
Performance and accessibility problems should be monitored with the eye of end-users. Time spent at different levels of business processes and details of them should be defined.
1.1.3. Monitoring Network Structure and Devices
Thanks to monitoring network devices with respect to connectivity, component (CPU, memory, fan, power etc.) and interface statistics (usage percentage, errors etc.); the interruptions that have occurred or that are likely to occur in network structure can be identified in advance.
Except network elements, thanks to monitoring the traffic flowing over these devices, it is possible to discover the errors caused by traffic change on real-time basis.
It will be possible to access detailed information on real-time basis about the root cause of the interruption in case of every potential interruption. Hence, MTTR value of the interruptions can be minimized, efficiency will enhance along IT and administrative costs will reduce.
1.1.4. System Exploration and Configuration Management
Thanks to automatic explorations by scanning all systems in the infrastructure regularly; interactions between these systems can be defined at application and hardware basis. Besides that, every hardware and software modifications will be under control. B
By keeping the obtained data in a configuration management database, these data will become shareable with monitoring and admin devices.
Obtained data will give information not only about the infrastructure but also relationship between infrastructures, application automatically.
Since these data is updated periodically, system conditions information will be always up-to-date and data can be provided for asset management.
1.1.5. Proactive Warning System
If all abovementioned monitoring and admin systems are combined under a single body, thanks to use of proactive warning system, it is possible to know every potential failure in the system (hardware, software, network etc.), to learn the failure on real-time basis and to find out root cause. It will be also possible to make performance analysis for these systems and trend analysis.
Due to this proactive warning system to be conducted, systems will be kept at highest level with respect to accessibility and performance and resistance will be provided against disaster happenings.
If modern communication structures (SMS, e-mail etc.) are included in the proactive warning system, system interruptions will reach to the related parties in the corporate more rapidly and then time spent during these interruptions will be minimized.
Importance of IT Administration Products in Business Continuity Projects
Business Continuity Management (BCM) planning focuses on maintaining business processes continuity. It is one of the most important factors to sustain an organization before and after an interruption. BCM is the key component of Comprehensive Emergency Action Plan. The corporates which do not have a proper business continuity plan cannot survive in case of an interruption. It is very beneficial to adopt a good plan for the long marathons.
Thanks to business continuity plan, critical IT applications and infrastructures are made available with respect to functionality and recovery processes are supported.
It is necessary to real-time monitor servers, network components, and software and data bases within IT infrastructure. This monitoring may become more critical with respect to business continuity and audit aspect.
To measure instantaneous performance of infrastructure elements and test their availability; agent and non-agent methods can be preferred based on use area such as:
* Server sources: CPU, RAM, disc area, network utilization etc.
* Bandwidth use of network elements
* Web applications performance
1.1.2. Monitoring the Applications
Besides IT infrastructure monitoring, it is also important to monitor applications which run on these systems in order to achieve business continuity. Monitoring critical business processes and performance and accessibility at different layers of these processes will help to figure out failures which cannot be identified by monitoring only IT infrastructure.
Performance and accessibility problems should be monitored with the eye of end-users. Time spent at different levels of business processes and details of them should be defined.
1.1.3. Monitoring Network Structure and Devices
Thanks to monitoring network devices with respect to connectivity, component (CPU, memory, fan, power etc.) and interface statistics (usage percentage, errors etc.); the interruptions that have occurred or that are likely to occur in network structure can be identified in advance.
Except network elements, thanks to monitoring the traffic flowing over these devices, it is possible to discover the errors caused by traffic change on real-time basis.
It will be possible to access detailed information on real-time basis about the root cause of the interruption in case of every potential interruption. Hence, MTTR value of the interruptions can be minimized, efficiency will enhance along IT and administrative costs will reduce.
1.1.4. System Exploration and Configuration Management
Thanks to automatic explorations by scanning all systems in the infrastructure regularly; interactions between these systems can be defined at application and hardware basis. Besides that, every hardware and software modifications will be under control. B
By keeping the obtained data in a configuration management database, these data will become shareable with monitoring and admin devices.
Obtained data will give information not only about the infrastructure but also relationship between infrastructures, application automatically.
Since these data is updated periodically, system conditions information will be always up-to-date and data can be provided for asset management.
1.1.5. Proactive Warning System
If all abovementioned monitoring and admin systems are combined under a single body, thanks to use of proactive warning system, it is possible to know every potential failure in the system (hardware, software, network etc.), to learn the failure on real-time basis and to find out root cause. It will be also possible to make performance analysis for these systems and trend analysis.
Due to this proactive warning system to be conducted, systems will be kept at highest level with respect to accessibility and performance and resistance will be provided against disaster happenings.
If modern communication structures (SMS, e-mail etc.) are included in the proactive warning system, system interruptions will reach to the related parties in the corporate more rapidly and then time spent during these interruptions will be minimized.