IT Operations Management

As we work on customer projects and requests, we've developed number of valuable features for RapidOSS. We typically add these features as sample "solution templates". These solutions are typically distributed as part of the product under solutions directory. Solution templates serve as examples, demonstration of what's possible and starting points for customers.

In a series of posts, I'll mention some of these seemingly small features that seem to be important to some users.

I'll start with the audible alarms. Many customers want to be able to configure their PCs to warn them by playing a distinct sound (aka beep) to get their attention when there is a critical event, etc. Sounds simple enough, no?

Surprisingly this is quite cumbersome to implement with many IT management tools, requiring users to install software on the PCs, distribute scripts, audio files, etc. creating unnecessary administrative overhead. It is also hard to get it configured in such a way that is useful to the users.  read more »

Topology maps and events lists (aka alerts/alarms/notifications) are two most commonly used UI patterns to present monitoring data to users in network monitoring. The usefulness of topology maps is not an agreed upon subject in the network monitoring community. Some folks think maps are "must have" for a monitoring tool, others don't care for them at all.

Most monitoring tools in the market do offer some kind of maps functionality, but the quality varies significantly, not all maps are created equal. I think usefulness of the network topology maps highly depend on the design of the solution. Network monitoring field is full of people scarred by the experience of manually maintaining the hierarchical maps (a la HPOV NNM). I personally think maps indeed can be useful when implemented right, and many people do request it hence we've added Maps to RapidOSS.
Distilling the experiences of the past, we've steered clear of the most common pain points associated with maps. Here is how/why RapidOSS map component is different:  read more »

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Press Release - May 13, 2009

iFountain, an innovative independent software vendor specializing in IT Operations Management announced that its RapidOSS product is the winner of the EMC® Velocity² Technology & ISV Program “2008 EMC Partner Solution Award: Offering of the Year for EMC Smarts®.”  read more »