What is IT Operations Management (ITOM)?

IT operations management can be defined as the process of supervising the various physical and virtual components of an IT infrastructure; ensuring their performance, health, and availability; and enabling them to work seamlessly with other components of your infrastructure. IT operations management (ITOM) also plays an active part of larger IT management models, including IT infrastructure management (ITIM), data center infrastructure management (DCIM), etc.

Businesses today, irrespective of their industry, are largely dependent on IT. Organizations’ IT infrastructures need to be robust and agile. This can only be achieved by accurate and efficient management of IT operations that ensures these operations are performing at optimum levels.

What are the various factors that hinder IT operations?

Device health and performance

Failing to monitor your device health and performance can lead to device downtime, amounting to major losses on a day-to-day basis. Customers today have high expectations; they expect devices to be available 24/7, meaning the method of fixing things when they break doesn’t work anymore.

Monitoring device performance allows you to proactively identify device outages, which otherwise lead to an assortment of issues such as loss of productivity, unresponsive devices, expenses in terms of device maintenance, etc.

Network congestion

Most networks today require high-speed internet connections to efficiently operate the large number of devices present in them. If traffic moving through an infrastructure is not regulated, applications and infrastructure components will be left competing for bandwidth.

Unregulated bandwidth and traffic can lead to a barrage of issues and result in an unpleasant experience for the end user. This includes slow loading time, closed connections, loading interruptions, applications not responding, etc.

Faulty configuration changes

Configuration management focuses on ensuring consistency in product performance by identifying which components have been changed and why. In a multi-user environment, it’s tedious and time-consuming to track configuration changes and the users that made them. Faulty configuration changes can cause failed implementation, loss of productivity, and ultimately unexpected outages.

Cyberattacks and threats

Cybercrime is on the rise, leading many companies to implement security measures to protect their data. Security threats such as DDoS attacks, unauthorized IP addresses accessing your network, and malicious users can cause millions of dollars in losses. These can be economic losses (money, financial information, loss of business/contract), reputation losses (loss of customers, sales, profits), or legal losses (failure to comply with security standards, leading to fines and regulatory sanctions).

Application performance issues

A top priority for businesses around the world is having a quality web application as well as ensuring it runs smooth and trouble free. Some common application performance issues are network connectivity, slow server response time, un-optimized bandwidth usage, traffic spikes, etc.

Benefits of deploying IT operations management (ITOM) solutions

The benefits of ITOM is so obvious that, it is not surprising for IT operations management software to be well-received. ITOM has been gaining increasing popularity in the past decade. It is estimated that the market for IT operations management software has achieved a revenue of $9.5 billion in 2018 worldwide. On top of that, the market as a whole is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.9 percent during 2019–2023.

Knowing how ITOM works and why ITOM is important will greatly contribute to increasing your understanding of the benefits of ITOM. However, to boost infrastructure performance and derive maximum IT operations management efficiency, it is imperative that you choose the right tool for the job.

How OpManager Plus offers end-to-end IT operations management

Apart from monitoring various types of ITOM components, OpManager Plus also offers the following capabilities.

OpManager Plus, an integrated ITOM solution eliminates the need for multiple IT operations management tools and provides greater visibility across your infrastructure from a single unified console. Some of the features of this ITOM platform include:

Monitoring availability and health

• As an IT infrastructure management tool, in addition to performance optimizing, OpManager Plus is also capable of monitoring the health of your hardware components such as servers, routers, and switches by monitoring critical metrics like power, temperature, and voltage to reduce issues caused by hardware errors.

Virtual monitoring prowess

• OpManager Plus can be employed to monitor your virtual devices including VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix, and Xen devices. With over 40 out-of-the-box performance monitors, you can ensure the efficiency of critical resources.

Traffic and bandwidth monitoring

• OpManager Plus, an efficient ITOM software helps you leverage flow technologies such as NetFlow, sFlow, JFlow, IPFIX, NetStream, and AppFlow to provide real-time visibility into bandwidth performance. Monitor wireless LAN controllers, and view detailed reports on SSIDs, APs, and QoS

Configuration and compliance management

• OpManager Plus provides configuration and compliance management. It performs automatic backup and change management, and ensures the organization’s internal policies are compliant with SOX, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and Cisco IOS standards out of the box.

Firewall and log management

• Obtain insights into security threats from log reports, create log management rules, and optimize firewall performance. Perform security audits, and ensure your firewall stays compliant with PCI DSS, ISO 27001, NIST, NERC-CIP, and SANS mandates.

Lightning fast rule-based discovery

• OpManager’s unique rule-based discovery process helps you automatically configure monitors, and associate notification profiles to devices upon discovering devices if a preset rule is satisfied.
• Discover all your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses by scanning the subnet, and monitor the status of all your ports using the switch port mapper. Detect rogue devices, and prevent them from accessing your network.

Robust storage management

• Monitor storage devices such as RAID and the tape library, and leverage advanced forecast and capacity planning to effectively predict your organization’s storage requirements.

Simplify IT operations monitoring with OpManager Plus

OpManager Plus’ host of versatile features make it an effective IT infrastructure monitoring and management tool. Its scalability features allows it to be swiftly employed by large organizations to tackle enterprise ITOM. Best practices of ITOM have been incorporated into the key features of this IT Infrastructure and Operations Management tool which are:

Advanced reports

• Perform detailed analysis with over 200 out-of-the box reports, or create custom reports catering to your needs.

Dashboard and network operations center (NOC) view with custom widgets

• Multiple ITOM processes such as network performance management, bandwidth management, network configuration management, firewall analysis, IP address management (IPAM), switch port mapping (SPM), and storage management can be monitored from a single unified view using a mix of default and custom created widgets.

Data center infrastructure management with advanced visualization

• Advanced visualization features such as the rack view and third-floor view allow you to recreate your data center and monitor it in real time.

Quick and easy-to-use fault management solution

• OpManager Plus’ notification profile allows color-coded alarms to be created according to their severity. You can choose to get notified of these alarms via SMS, email, chat, etc. OpManager Plus can be configured to trigger Workflows that are prepared in advance to automate critical processes.