Changing Data Center Requirements in the Post-Information Age

As China’s enterprise IT industry develops, enterprises will turn their attention from software and hardware infrastructure roll-out to system maintenance. They will enter a post-information age―the age of focused operation and maintenance management (OMM).

According to CCID data, the Chinese IT OMM market reached RMB2.98 billion (US$492 million) and grew by 24.1% in 2009. This jumped to approximately RMB5 billion (US$825 million) in 2010 and RMB6 billion (US$990 million) in 2011. Market growth was 28.7% in 2012. Enterprise users are analyzing IT OMM service and its value in depth, and great importance is being placed on IT services in the enterprise development lifecycle. The IT OMM market is expected to grow by 20% in 2014.

As IT OMM develops, users are beginning to demand more in terms of OMM service assurance, troubleshooting, and experience. IT OMM involves construction of IT infrastructure as well as passive and active OAM. It is also a source of profit for enterprises focused on creating service value. IT OMM will play a crucial role in enterprise development and will determine whether an enterprise grows or even survives. Only when they understand the difference between service value support and service value creation can enterprise IT departments create value in their IT services and enter the era of next-generation intelligent IT OMM services.

Data Center OMM in the Post-Information Age

ZTE has developed an integrated intelligent IT OMM system based on ITIL best practice, ISO20000, and ITSS standards. The IT OMM system supports multiple platforms and devices from different vendors, and makes possible visual, measurable, and standardized IT OMM.

ZTE’s integrated, intelligent IT OMM system is highly recognized for its stability, usability, and integration. It has been widely used by telecommunications, finance, government, power, education, tobacco, healthcare, media, and transportation enterprises. It has complete functions and a closed ring to cover all aspects of data centers. The system gives reliable service assurance through equipment management, business service management, user access management, in-depth traffic monitoring, extensible acquisition architecture, rich and intuitive visual view, perfect virtualized resource management, multiperspective user terminal management, and complete IT software and hardware monitoring. OMM service is implemented from the bottom infrastructure layer and covers every aspect of operation and maintenance.

The IT OMM system provides intelligent fault management, including all kinds of alarms and alert notifications, embedded Trap and Syslog resolutions, and various event handling policies. Alarms are obtained from the data collection layer, and maintenance tickets are automatically dispatched and handled on mobile phones. A variety of remote handling tools, instant equipment snapshot, fault recovery mechanism, and flexible event cause analysis are used for fault diagnosis. This enables intelligent fault management in data centers.

The IT OMM system also enables efficient IT service management. Through effective information transfer, complete asset management, standard OAM flow management, multilevel management, distributed deployment, role-based OMM, and full-view IT service management, the system provides references that enable IT OMM personnel to assess performance. It converts individual OMM experience into enterprise knowledge and focuses on personnel, flows, and technologies to build an efficient data center.

Building an Excellent Data Center OMM System

OMM means comprehensive IT service management at the monitoring, operation, and management levels. It enables monitoring and management of infrastructure resources and service applications.

ZTE’s IT OMM system optimizes the OAM flow in compliance with ITIL standards and enables standard flow management of events, faults, changes, and configurations. It provides a unified portal interface based on single sign-on technology and a unified management portal to display application status and performance of all equipment and software related to services. The system also provides the most practical OMM views to help engineers efficiently carry out OMM work.

ITIL best practice and ITSS standards are used for service management, and rapid CMDB-centered flow customization is available to help customers improve service capability and quality. Equipment operation status, virtualized resources, and equipment room resources are managed to guarantee services. Efficient troubleshooting mechanisms are also established.

The scope of IT OMM covers terminal user access and IT infrastructure ranging from traditional hardware and software to virtualization, links, and power environment. ZTE’s IT OMM platform also provides mobile terminal OMM interfaces, ITSS interfaces, and third-party system interfaces to interconnect with other platforms.

Improving the Value of Data Center

The primary goal of IT departments is service assurance: This is the basis of enterprise activities. Therefore, the IT OMM system must be service oriented. ZTE’s intelligent IT OMM system integrates IT management and services and enables service-relation analysis, service support assessment, and service system health management. It creates value for IT departments.

IT management goals come from service goals, so IT management serves the services. ZTE’s intelligent IT OMM system can perceive service state and risks, troubleshoot service faults, rapidly recover services, and ensure high service availability. The system has quantifiable indicators for QoS optimization and reporting. It manages the weighting of the influence of different IT components on the service system, estimates the capacity of all IT components, and monitors their availability. The system can also analyze the operational trends of all ZTE’s equipment and service systems and provide early warnings for management decisions if necessary.

ZTE’s IT OMM system focuses on data centers and enables visual, measurable, automatic, intelligent, integrated IT OAM. The system continues to enhance overall IT service levels while supporting IT OAM for enterprises. It serves as a new starting point for potential future green and efficient OAM.