Microsoft Certified Consultants Microsoft Operations Manager: Features and Benefits
For small businesses in Northern California and major locations nationally, Progent's Microsoft-qualified consulting group provides computer help and information technology expertise for Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) and for the growing set of Application Management Packs that extend the power of MOM to a broad range of mission-critical services. Progent can show you how to benefit from Operations Manager by providing needs assessment, installation, setup, customization, local and off-site network support and repair,
Help Desk Call Center support, security expertise, and
outsourcing for System Center Operations Manager.
What Is Microsoft Operations Manager?
MS Operations Manager 2007 is a next-generation network management solution that keeps track of the reliability, throughput, and safety of your IT system by proactively identifying trouble and trends occurring on critical computers throughout your entire environment.
MS Operations Manager operates by automatically examining event history from critical servers, then filtering, organizing, and evaluating these network events based on a comprehensive expert database. When MS Operations Manager detects problems or a potentially damaging trend, it can execute special remedial scripts or send alerts to notify designated service personnel. For instance, Microsoft Operations Manager can automatically take off line an infected server to prevent the propagation of a detected virus. MOM also generates trend data so you can monitor the health of your IT network and make sure that trouble warnings have been satisfactorily addressed.
Microsoft Operations Manager 2007 features powerful enhancements over MS Operations Manager 2005 such as informative new reports and an easy to modify reporting environment, plus reduction of false alarms via advanced self-tuning tracking thresholds that learn and adjust alerting behavior to the normal business operation of programs and systems. Microsoft Operations Manager 2007 also features new model-based management. By defining the IT environment as models, MS Operations Manager 2007 can more readily learn the relationships between the distributed software and components that make up your IT environment. These models, profiled in the System Definition Model that is the foundation for the industry standard Services Modeling Language, allow for more fine-grained detection of service components and the power to monitor not only the servers but the whole totality of service as a unique object.
Microsoft Operations Manager Management Packs
Management Packs are the building blocks which carry Microsoft Operations Manager management features to OS platforms, programs and utilities, and other technology components. A Management Pack (MP) contains best practice knowledge to discover, monitor, analyze, chronicle, and repair problems for a specified network component. Management Packs include health models based on the Systems Definition Model (SDM) to analyze the performance, availability, configuration and security data, as well as the status of related components, to decide the overall condition of components. Operations Manager Management Packs are available for Microsoft and other OS platforms, applications, and devices.
Microsoft provides System Center Operations Manager Management Packs for over 60 Microsoft products and Windows components. Microsoft's MPs are written by the same developers who built the associated products so the expertise and knowledge incorporated is derived from the industry's most expert source. All of the Microsoft MPs are included for licensed users of MS Operations Manager 2007. Management Packs provided Microsoft include:
Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC)
MS Terminal Services 2003
Microsoft Transaction Server
Microsoft Site Server
Application Center
Proxy Server 2.0
3rd-party and Custom MS Operations Manager 2007 Management Packs
MS Operations Manager 2007 Management Packs for many non-Microsoft products including Linux, Oracle, and SAP, and for a variety of network appliances, are produced and available from Microsoft Partners. There are over one hundred Microsoft Partner MPs covering the majority of technologies utilized by most businesses.
Microsoft has published several utilities for developing or customizing Management Packs for MS Operations Manager 2007. Microsoft's Distributed Application Designer is a graphical tool for assisting network administrators to create performance models and MPs for their IT Services. Microsoft's Management Pack Authoring Console is a GUI-based tool designed to help network administrators and programmers to create MPs for their specialized business programs and other technology components. The Operations Manager 2007 SDK contains programming interfaces so developers can more thoroughly control and regulate Operations Manager 2007.
Benefits of MOM
MOM improves the reliability of business-critical servers by automatically detecting and helping to fix problems before they can bring down a computer. For an example of how MOM has benefited a Northern California small business, read the
Microsoft Operations Manager Case Study.
Microsoft Operations Manager can optimize system throughput by monitoring predefined performance criteria and usage patterns on critical servers, enabling IT managers to be more proactive in adding performance-boosting resources and to eliminate problem areas before they cause severe network bottlenecks.
MS Operations Manager reduces IT staffing expenses by streamlining the tasks of network management. Because MOM can intelligently monitor and organize massive amounts of data collected from many computers, fewer system managers are required to take care of IT operations. In addition, the ability of MOM to perform without human intervention in response to alerts makes it feasible to create expert scripts that can take complex corrective actions which would ordinarily call for the manual support of technical personnel.
By automatically generating alarms and sending them via e-mail or pagers to designated support staff, MOM makes it simpler for IT groups to meet service level agreements. Microsoft Operations Manager's database helps resolve problems more quickly, and Microsoft Operations Manager's reports make sure that job tickets don't get ignored. Automatic 24x7 tracking and alarm transmission also allows businesses to utilize their IT group more effectively so that more work can be taken on without compromising network support.
In general, MOM offers small businesses the benefits of non-stop system monitoring plus expertise in troubleshooting without being required to pay for a large, in-house service group.
How Progent Can Help You Benefit from Microsoft Operations Manager
Setting up Microsoft Operations Manager's, sophisticated monitoring software can be a challenge. With over six years of background with the NetIQ product upon which Operations Manager is built, Progent's IT support engineers can assist you to chose appropriate System Center Operations Manager features, install and set up System Center Operations Manager, and create custom rules, procedures, analytics, and alerts for your business. Progent can also document Operations Manager's application monitoring rules and protocols.
For technical problems uncovered by Operations Manager, you can outsource problem response to Progent's Microsoft-qualified consulting experts.
With years of network management background, these support professionals possess the skill to react effectively to the information generated by Microsoft Operations Manager to keep mission-critical systems running steadily. By analyzing trend reports and responding efficiently to alerts, Progent can resolve incipient problems before they cause system failure and fix urgent problems as soon as they appear. In the majority of instances, Progent can solve trouble remotely, saving time and expense. For severe trouble that calls for in-person support, Progent can quickly send a field engineer to the location of any small or medium-size company in the San Francisco Bay Area or in major cities throughout the U.S..
Progent's large staff of consulting professionals makes it possible, if necessary, to escalate tough problems by utilizing the skills to some of the San Francisco Bay Area's most knowledgeable computer consultants.
To learn additional information about System Center Operations Manager and how Progent can help your small business receive enterprise-class network support by adopting this revolutionary platform, select one of these topics:
If you are looking for a Microsoft Operations Manager consulting specialist or a MOM-based IT outsourcing service package, call Progent at 800-993-9400 or send email to
experts@progent.com.
Progent's Consulting Services for Microsoft Technology
For small and mid-sized companies in the San Francisco region, San Jose, or anywhere in the United States, Progent's Microsoft-authorized consultants can provide network assistance and professional consulting services for the whole family of Microsoft .NET servers, Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, and Microsoft Windows Server 2K. Progent's planning, integration, optimization, and consulting capabilities cover network design, configuration, and management outsourcing for
project analysis and documentation, local and off-site
technical help and system troubleshooting,
Help Desk Outsourcing Support, comprehensive
security consulting, and IT
outsourcing.
