What is a baseline?

What is a baseline?  Dictionary.com defines it as a “specific value or values that can serve as a comparison or control”.  When discussing enterprise management goals, the baseline is the starting point.  Most folks considering enterprise management software want to address a problem.  A typical issue that I hear is “the network is slow” or “application is slow”.  However, when I ask, “what is the desired response time” or “what a good day is”, most folks have no idea where the performance needs to go.  They only know it needs to be better, faster, and end user complaints.  So just as when on purchases a used car or decides to go on a diet, we need a starting point (the number of miles on the car, current weight).  The baseline, just as the definition indicates, provides the comparison/control for the enterprise management solution.  Typical baselines include CPU utilization, response time measurements, number of users, available storage, and memory utilization.  With these starting points, we then deploy a monitoring solution to measure our performance against the controls.  Establishing baselines is the starting point for most enterprise system management deployments.

What is Enterprise Systems Mangement (ESM) and why do I care?

What is enterprise systems management (ESM) and why do I care? 

Enterprise Systems Management is the monitoring and controlling of an organization’s applications, processes, and devices to achieve objectives.  An organization accomplishes ESM with technology, people, and process – some nearly exclusively with people and process.  The goal of ESM is to provide the right information and controls to right person at the right time to ensure mission success.  My favorite analogy is to compare ESM to driving an automobile.  In this analogy, the gauges and controls available to driver represent the type of controls an organization lacks without ESM.  Could you imagine operating a car with no knowledge of the remaining fuel, no idea of your current speed, and no method to adjust your speed?  Now think of a business with no idea how it consumes resources, no idea of remaining resources, and no method to control the resource consumption.  Is it possible to reach your destination at the precise hour in either situation?

The reason why I care about ESM is two-fold – ESM is my job and my job is to do some good always.  I want to share with all of you the importance of ESM and I want all of you to embrace ESM – even if only to improve your people and process.  I want all of you to have the controls and gauges to know the state of your resources and if you have the resources to reach your objectives.  I want everyone to reach their destination on time, with resources to spare, and no speeding tickets (“officer, I have no idea how fast I was going, I have no ESM” is not a good answer).

I am looking to do some good…always.  My goal is to find a way to make ESM a standard, a discipline taught in schools, something that exists in all organizations.  When was the last time you got in a car and found there was no speedometer? I want the answer to be the same for ESM in the organization.  I plan to make it so.