Learn How Dell's Approach to Workload Automation Increased Business Efficiency.

Dell's SMART Approach to Workload Automation
Executive Summary A short time ago, Dell, like many other companies, embarked on a broad initiative to integrate and upgrade its IT services to better satisfy business needs. As part of this initiative, Dell addressed a job scheduling solution that had failed to keep pace with ITIL integration. In enterprises around the world, stale job scheduling software lingers for fear of the costs and risks of conversion. Dell's experience yields the following In enterprises around the lessons in the successful conversion and exploitation of world, stale job scheduling workload automation software:
software lingers for fear of the 1. C hoose software with a proven track record for rapid costs and risks of conversion. and uneventful conversions.2. Choose a vendor with a proven track record for supe-rior customer service.3. C hoose a solution supporting enterprise-wide frameworks that align IT services with business needs - the primary tenet of IT Service Management (ITSM).4. Choose products that permit a modular approach so that the company can selec-tively target automation areas while also controlling the duration, ROI, and scope of projects.Because Dell followed these fundamental rules, their success today extends beyond a smooth conversion into efficient, scalable, integrated, event-driven, workload automa-tion (WLA) architecture that addresses the service concerns of both business and IT. To accomplish this, Dell chose BMC's CONTROL-M.
Introduction ®In previous papers, the ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES (EMAT) team has proposed a high-level modular methodology for implementation of WLA - a mature evolution of job scheduling that: 1) Automates complex IT processing with a business service focus,2) Supports event-driven workloads across multiple platforms, and 3) Integrates diverse applications, architectures and systems. The path to WLA starts with a consolidation of job scheduling across all enterprise plat-forms but reaches maturity as the enterprise addresses five modular "focus areas":. A pplication Integration - integrating application processing within a consolidated WLA system and across data center boundaries, ERP suites, Web Service deployments, Software as a Service (SaaS), and file transfer systems.. E nd-to-End Workflow Mapping - identifying and grouping enterprise-wide workflow components by business application.1 ITIL - Information Technology Infrastructure Library - comprehensive documentation of best practice for IT Service Management.
TEMA CASE STUDY Page  ©2008 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.. E nterprise Visibility and Management - relating interconnected workloads with business objectives.. S ervice-Driven Management - connecting WLA with ITSM disciplines such as event monitoring, performance monitoring, change management, and problem tracking.. Dynamic and Agile Workflow - integrating WLA solutions with management tools for monitoring, provisioning, and orchestration in order to allocate computing resources as required. An organization may implement one focus area across the entire enterprise or it may imple-ment any number of focus areas for a single application or business unit. This modularity provides a SMART (Simple, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) approach to WLA deployment that will increase the likelihood of success.
About the CompanyFounded in 1984, Dell, a company with 82,700 employees, 80 locations, and $62 billion in FY2007 revenues, is a global leader in the design, manufacture and sales of desktop PCs, laptops, servers, networking products and storage devices. EMA interviewed Chip Sturdevant, a Dell systems engineer for 11 years who architects and supports a variety of Infrastructure Management tools (monitoring, discovery, valida-tion, CMDB), including job scheduling. Chip told a story that is consistent with Dell's longstanding process leadership, wherein IT sought to simplify and automate its schedul-ing in order to improve productivity, responsiveness, and quality.
The ProblemFive years ago, job scheduling at Dell was manual, time-driven, and jointly managed by IT and various business partners. The bulk of Dell's servers ran Windows (about 20,000) and Linux (3,500); however, other platform/OS types were scattered throughout the enterpr... [download for more]