Provisioning IT

Context

A multinational with about 22.000 globally dispersed workstations and servers in 22 countries, has grown organically through mergers and acquisitions. The organization chose to keep existing regional IT infrastructure in place to safeguard the independence of individual subsidiaries.

Yet, the global service management team is responsible for a number of central IT functions, including name resolution, mail delivery, security monitoring, and software- and patch deployment. Monitoring these services is complex.

For example, a seemingly simple task such as determining the exact number of devices at any moment in time requires correlating data from Active Directory, asset discovery-, and security management systems in several locations and from different vendors. Establishing vulnerability of these devices to a specific threat requires even more sources of data.

Mission

Provide a holistic view on the inventory, performance, and health of systems and services to IT staff on global, regional, and local levels.

Solution

Provisioning IT is a system with a layered architecture built on top of Microsoft SQL Server and SharePoint:

Configuration Maintenance Data Warehouse

• Custom 'collectors' written in PowerShell and C# gather information from a variety of sources into a central database.
• Overnight ETL removes duplicates, builds relations and aggregates, and feeds the results into a multi-dimensional store.

Technology integration

• Tools and guidelines allow local and regional service management teams to feed their data into the warehouse.
• Web services built into the warehouse allow existing service management tools to exploit data.

Reporting

• Users search, share, and download information in the web portal.
• Users drilldown to their operational level, subject matter, and location to consult reports and compare their performance with that of the global organization.

The Provisioning IT system increases operational efficiency by leveraging existing management systems to provide IT staff a holistic view on data they require at each operational level. Central staff again has a finger on the pulse of their dispersed IT infrastructure.