Previously, we’ve looked at Backup Tracker and Ticket Tracker and today, we’re going to provide an insight into Event Tracker, including looking at how it can be of benefit to you.

What exactly is Event Tracker?

Automatically managing all events that are apparent within your TSM environment, Event Tracker provides a visual representation of the health of your TSM environment. It has the ability to alert Systems Administrators to specific events that take place within the system by regularly carrying out up to 100 different checks, controlled from a user-friendly interface.

Furthermore, all events can be fed through to Predatar V6.5′s Ticket Tracker module, instantly and automatically, providing an integrated, up-to-date event management system.

What key points does Event Tracker have?

The primary key point of Event Tracker for many is that Event Tracker fully automates the event management process within a TSM environment, something that can take up a considerable amount of internal IT resources.

Furthermore, as the module is customizable and allows for users to specify, for instance, which events they need to be alerted to, not only is monitoring time in general reduced through the overall automation of the event management process, but resource time is reduced further, with only the chosen flagged events needing to be attended to – all of which is monitored on a single screen, colour coded dashboard.

How can Event Tracker benefit an organization?

Seen by some as one of Predatar V6.5′s key modules, the fact Event Tracker automates the event management process, freeing up resources and allowing for Systems Administrators to focus their attention on other areas of the TSM environment is often the main benefit for organizations.

The module’s heavy customization plays a large part in its benefit to organizations, as not only can events raised be categorized into four separate groups, but they can be raised manually if need be and a daily report can be provided to specified users, providing an up-to-date overview of the health of the TSM environment.

And although somewhat subtle, the highly effective by-products of using the module have also proven to be extremely successful. From the fact that automating processes results in resources, time and money being saved, through to TSM best practices being easier to implement and abide by (which in turn increases efficiency and overall productivity within both the TSM environment and essentially the business as a whole) the benefits really do vary widely.

Predatar V6.5′s Event Tracker module forms part of the wider system and although useful should this be the only module you were to utilize fully, complete integration of Predatar V6.5 is likely to completely change the way in which you manage your TSM environment.

This belief in our software is something that we pass on to each and every one of our resellers and we’re proud to say that all of Predatar V6.5′s resellers share the same enthusiasm for TSM automation in helping businesses succeed as we do.

While we offer as much advice and support to our customers as possible, our resellers also have a fantastically in-depth knowledge of Predatar V6.5 and TSM. To showcase that knowledge, one of our resellers – Silverstring – has put together three great core training modules to help you get the most out of your TSM environment.

Predatar Knowledge Tracker

One of Predatar V6.5′s latest releases, Knowledge Tracker has been developed to provide a wealth of knowledge on problems you may face in your TSM environment.

Although Knowledge Tracker itself is user-friendly, Silverstring understands that not everyone has the time to ensure they can use it in the best way possible to get answers quickly and effectively. Therefore, they are running one-hour webexs to demonstrate how best to use Knowledge Tracker within your organisation and existing TSM environment setup.

TSM Operations Training

A two-day training course aimed at organisation’s TSM operations teams, this training combines the delivery of information to help users have a better hands-on approach with their TSM environment, whilst also enhancing their knowledge and understanding of numerous related processes.

By the close of play on the second day, all attendees should be able to carry out a range of TSM tasks, from managing automated TSM processes to resolving common issues, as well as having a better understanding of both capacity and tape management, amongst other topics.

Advanced TSM V6

Arguably one of the most interesting and potentially useful training courses offered by Silverstring, the Advanced TSM V6 training module is a bespoke package, tailored to an organisation’s requirements.

Based around developing the attendees’ TSM V6 knowledge in a way that will be beneficial to their system setup and requirements, it allows for attendees to gain practical experience with the new and existing features of TSM V6, including server de-duplication and virtual environment protection.

We’re a great believer in on-going training and development at Predatar and we always aim to instil the same views in our customers – the more time that can be spent on developing your knowledge and understanding of the system, the more benefits you will be able to take advantage of with Predatar V6.5 and TSM as a whole.

For more details on any of these three core training modules, contact info@silverstring.com and for further information on Predatar reseller Silverstring, visit their website at www.silverstring.com.

However, there are many organizations who simply do not understand the true capabilities of TSM, whether that’s because they are content with how they are using it at present or they simply haven’t had the opportunity to look at how their usage could be developed further.

Irrelevant of the reason why, it’s highly likely that you can achieve more from TSM than you first anticipated, with positive impacts on a variety of business aspects. The following details how business productivity can be improved upon considerably through the use of automation Apps for TSM.

1. More automation means less manual resources

The simplest and most obvious aspect of utilizing automation Apps for TSM is that the more automated processes you have in place within your TSM environment, the less manual resources that are required.

A prime example is the on-going maintenance of your TSM integrated back-up systems, for which continual monitoring and reporting is required to ensure they are, for instance, performing to expectations and aren’t nearing capacity.

By automating this process, you can greatly reduce the level of manual input required, as once setup, the process will run automatically and continuously, warning specific users should it encounter any unusual activity.

2. Processes that are automated don’t have to be overseen by your Systems Administrators

Leading on from the above, the IT department within many organizations is often understaffed – not generally due to a lack of recruitment funding, but because it’s often difficult to find the right people with the required knowledge.

And because of this, often experienced Systems Administrators are having to carry out what are, in essence, simple tasks, taking up valuable time that they could be dedicating to other parts of the system.

Through the automation of certain TSM processes, first line IT staff can be trained in-house to monitor these tasks, not only allowing for Systems Administrators to focus on other areas of the IT environment, but also helping to reduce recruitment costs, as a greater number of lesser experienced staff can be employed over experienced – and costly – IT professionals.

3. Automating processes reduces human error

One of the most common issues with any IT-related business process is human error, something that although can be a small issue initially, will often result in more resources than was first necessary becoming involved to provide a solution.

While utilizing automation Apps for TSM will not completely remove the issue of human error, it is likely to greatly reduce the number of errors that currently exist, as the simple fact is, the less human contact a system receives, the less human errors that are likely.

Automation Apps for TSM can completely revolutionise the way in which businesses operate, from increasing productivity through to impacting positively upon customer service and through an effective implementation and maintenance strategy, the benefits can be seen frequently and continuously.

Firstly, it may be a little belated, but Happy New Year! I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year and January hasn’t made it seem too much of a distant memory.

For those of you who follow Predatar on Twitter – or in fact any of IBM’s Tivoli accounts – you’ll be aware that one of the main discussion points over the past few weeks has been IBM’s Pulse 2012 event.

Taking place between 4th and 7th March 2012 at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, IBM Pulse is an annual event whereby over 8,000 attendees can meet, discuss the varying ways in which IT is being changed through the delivery of innovative products and services, be educated on a range of topics from leading industry specialists both showcasing and speaking at the event and generally have a fantastically enjoyable time at one of the most renowned industry events.

And I’m delighted to say that Predatar will be attending Pulse 2012 – and we’d love to meet up with as many people as possible during the four day event.

Whether you’re an existing Predatar partner, an IBM contact we have or haven’t yet had the opportunity to talk to properly or you’re simply interested in how Predatar V6.5 is changing the way organizations manage their TSM environment, we really do see Pulse 2012 as the perfect opportunity to meet.

Unlike many other industry events, IBM’s Pulse 2012 combines educational resources and networking opportunities perfectly with world-renowned speakers and fantastic entertainment.

For instance, not only can you take advantage of six hours of hands on experience with many of IBM’s products on Sunday alone and listen to IBM’s Vice President of Marketing, Senior Vice President of IBM Software and General Manager of IBM Tivoli Software speak on Monday, but on Tuesday you can have a relaxing, enjoyable evening listening to the Grammy award winning Maroon 5.

While we’ll be prominent at Pulse 2012 and we welcome as many people as possible to come over to chat, if you’d like to arrange a specific time to meet, please feel free to email me, richard@predatar.com.

Pulse 2011 was a fantastic event and I believe Pulse 2012 is going to be just as good – if not better!

I look forward to seeing you there.

Richard Bates
CTO
Predatar

Unfortunately, the world of storage management and data protection is not getting any less complicated. To help cut through the normal hype and marketing pushes, we have developed Silver Bulletin.

Feedback from our first post of Silver Bulletin was really positive, so keep it coming!

This post includes a feature on the new quick fix tool for TSM, as well as an update on IBM and their impressive new releases around Unified Storage.

To get your copy, simply click the link below:

Silver Bulletin

Please let us have any feedback or if you for wish us to investigate a specific topic, just let us know by emailing info@silverstring.com.

Of all the different aims that organizations utilize Predatar V6.5 for, it’s primary aim is to help organizations have a more effective TSM environment – one that, in its most basic form, allows for noticeable improvements to be seen across the organization.

As with all software, it’s only as good as its users and an issue that’s apparent across the entire IT industry is that, as systems grow, there is a lack of suitably experienced personnel to deal with that growth. This is unfortunately something that very often means experienced IT technicians find themselves carrying out what are basic, routine, day-to-day tasks.

With the introduction of Knowledge Tracker, however, it is expected that for many organizations utilizing Predatar V6.5, this issue will soon become an issue of the past.

Knowledge Tracker is the culmination of several years of combined knowledge from numerous support specialists who have put together in excess of 700 fast fixes – a figure that is growing every week – the fixes are a mix of fairly specialized tasks and some of the more standard TSM environment tasks – tasks that, although may be simple and straightforward for an experienced IT user to carry out, are more complex for a new user to the system.

Integrating seamlessly with Predatar V6.5, Knowledge Tracker not only provides users with a base to access the articles from, but it can be setup in such a way that any issues and alerts made by Predatar V6.5 will link directly to a Knowledge Tracker fix, resulting in what can mean an almost instantaneous solution.

Allowing for up to 75% of all routine housekeeping tasks to be carried out by first line IT team members, rather than utilizing the time of a more experienced technician (who would therefore be able to focus on more complicated tasks), Knowledge Tracker not only increases the efficiency of a TSM environment, but it can improve your entire IT business processes by freeing up necessary resources, consequently reducing your IT spend.

Managing a TSM environment is not an easy task and requires for a substantial amount of knowledge, generally accrued through several years of TSM administration experience. With Knowledge Tracker, however, it is now possible for many of your first line IT technicians to become instantly competent and effective in TSM administration, something that, simply put, hasn’t ever been a possibility in the past.

For many, existing infrastructures and processes won’t have changed significantly over the last few years, often simply being amended to handle the growing capacity.

While suitable to a certain degree, there will be a breaking point – a point where the entire storage management infrastructure and all related processes need to be overhauled, something that can be particularly costly and resource heavy.

And although it’s often said that you shouldn’t try to fix something that isn’t broke, now is the perfect time to begin improving your existing infrastructure and processes, as the prevention of a potential problem is always better than a cure.

1. Understand fully what it is that you require

One of the primary issues that is very often faced in terms of storage management is organizations don’t fully understand what they require.

All organizations are aware that they need effective storage management processes, but there aren’t many who truly understand what it is they need when it comes down to specifics. However, it is this information that’s needed to ensure you improve in the best way possible.

For instance, although both an SME and a major global organization are going to require processes that allow for them to report on various aspects of their storage management infrastructure, the global organization is much more likely to require more in-depth reporting than the SME.

By researching and preparing this information before any improvements start to be made, you can be certain that any improvements that are made are suitable, effective and necessary.

2. Build effective foundations

Whether it’s a matter of creating an entirely new storage management infrastructure or making amendments to your existing system, the building of effective foundations is absolutely imperative to ensuring that the future maintenance and development of storage management processes and infrastructures are as effective and straightforward as they can be.

With any infrastructure, storage management or otherwise, the better foundations that are in place – i.e., the basis of the infrastructure and processes – the more effective the infrastructure will be in terms of everything from receiving what you want from it to future improvements.

3. Input your output

The most effective storage management infrastructures and processes are those which are continually improved upon and the simplest yet most effective way of doing so is to analyse and act upon everything you can.

Reporting is – or should be – a major storage management process and while being able to see and understand just what is taking place within your infrastructure is important, it is, to a certain extent, irrelevant if you don’t act upon the information you’re receiving.

As part of this point, it’s important that you take into consideration feedback received from users, or potential users, of the infrastructure. While the infrastructure may be able to be improved upon technically without any user input, the information received from users is imperative to ensuring the infrastructure is as beneficial to your Systems Administrator as it is to, if applicable, your Chief Executive.

Similarly, improving your infrastructure and processes provides the perfect opportunity to enhance the knowledge and skills of existing system users, whist also training and developing new users.

As systems expand, the volume of associated work also expands and there is therefore an improved requirement for more users who can effectively carry out even routine tasks, so to allow the Systems Administrator(s) to focus on more complex duties.

Having an in-depth storage management infrastructure and effective processes in place is fast becoming a necessity for all businesses. Although your existing processes may be working at present, the start of 2012 provides the perfect time to begin reviewing and improving both your infrastructure and processes to allow you to develop a better storage management system for the future.

What a year 2011 has been!

From the continued worldwide commercial development of 3D viewing, to the deeply saddening news that Steve Jobs, one of the world’s most prominent technological figures, passed away on 5th October 2011 aged just 56, it seems every part of the technology industry has seen some particular highs and lows throughout the past 12 months.

While every organization, irrelevant of their size, sees peaks and troughs throughout the year, I’m extremely pleased to say that for Predatar, the number of peaks we experienced throughout 2011 vastly outweighed any minor troughs.

Of course, the peak that stands out most prominently from right throughout the year is the launch of our latest software, Predatar V6.5.

Having been in development since 2010 our primary aim behind the software and right throughout the development was not to simply improve on the previous version of Predatar, but to add value to it so that each and every customer could find more benefit from utilizing it than ever before.

There’s no doubt that the past few years have been tough financially for everyone and we really do understand the necessity of having systems and processes in place that allow organizations to ensure they receive the most from their staff.

It’s a simple equation, but the less they have to focus on one aspect of their role, the more time they have to focus on another, instantly reducing the need to increase staff levels and therefore directly impacting upon company finances.

The last 12 months have been extremely exciting for everyone at Predatar, as not only have we been able to finalise the development of Predatar V6.5 and launch it to the market, but we’ve received some fantastic feedback, something that makes the delivery of any product to customers worthwhile.

Throughout 2012 and beyond, our plans are clear and simple – to continue the development and expansion of our automation Apps for TSM to ensure that each and every one of our customers cannot simply benefit from Predatar’s integration with their TSM environment in a minor way, but that it makes steps towards completely revolutionising the way in which they work.

From both myself and on behalf of everyone at Predatar, I’d like to wish you a very merry Christmas and all the very best for the coming year.

I look forward to seeing you in 2012!

Kind regards,

Richard Bates
CTO
Predatar

Earlier in the month, we took a look at one of Predatar V6.5′s modules, Backup Tracker, what it exactly did and how it could be of benefit to any organization utilizing TSM.

Today, we’re going to be doing the same with Predatar V6.5′s Ticket Tracker, explaining exactly what its purpose is and just how you can see it impact positively upon your TSM processes.

What does Ticket Tracker do?

As an automatically updating incident management system that works seamlessly and in conjunction with Predatar V6.5′s Event Tracker and Asset Tracker, Ticket Tracker provides all organizations with a complete and in-depth audit trail of any event generated, be it automatically or manually.

How exactly does Ticket Tracker work?

Through the effective utilization of Predatar V6.5′s Ticket Tracker module, all incidents that become apparent within the organization’s TSM environment can be raised as tickets, stored, tracked and acted upon in a quick and simple way.

The idea behind Ticket Tracker isn’t so much to develop an entirely new way of managing incidents, but to provide a process for organizations to manage all incidents raised that is easy-to-use and simple to understand.

What can I expect from utilizing Ticket Tracker?

One of the most noticeable positive impacts upon the utilization of Ticket Tracker is how the events that are being tracked are dealt with, both in terms of speed and overall efficiency.

For example, Ticket Tracker has the ability to allow for each and every ticket to be assigned to the most suitable areas for resolving, be it an internal administration team or an external third party.

When this is combined with the internal time recording system and direct linking to an in-depth knowledge base, there is very often a dramatic decrease in the amount of time that an incident remains a problem before it is fully resolved.

Furthermore, as with all of Predatar V6.5′s modules, reporting is a particularly prominent aspect of Ticket Tracker, with individual reports able to be produced on everything from incident types to incident priority levels, ensuring an even faster and smoother system to resolving raised tickets.

Ticket Tracker is just one of numerous modules that make up the entire Predatar V6.5 software package and through effectively utilizing either an individual module such as Ticket Tracker or each and every module combined, you can be certain that you will see a marked, positive improvement in your TSM environment’s efficiency and overall data protection and storage processes.

As with many pieces of technology, however, TSM can be developed and improved upon by integrating automation Apps, pieces of software that allow for a greater level of control over your TSM environment.

While this greater level of control is attractive in itself, the proper integration and utilization of automation Apps for TSM can save you a considerable amount of money and the following information details three of the primary ways you can save money using automation Apps for TSM.

1. Automate as many tasks as possible

While automation Apps have various beneficial aspects, as their name suggests, they give the organization the ability to automate various different tasks and processes. Predatar V6.5, for example, allows organizations to automate everything from processes that estimate recovery times at both file and sever level, through to alerting the System Administrator when it’s looking as though there’s going to be a problem within the system.

It’s therefore always recommended that to save as much money as possible, you automate as many tasks as you can. Although you may discover you can automate one or two tasks which prove to be beneficial, don’t stop there – develop your knowledge of the automation App and utilize it so that it carries out as much of your TSM tasks and processes as it possibly can.

2. Stop using more space than you need

In an age where the number of paper records is decreasing and more and more organizations are storing information electronically, there is a need to be certain that the data an organization holds is safe and can always be retrieved.

Due to this requirement, many organizations are continually reviewing their existing systems and looking into developing and expanding their storage, a lengthy process which often leads to purchasing more than is actually required.

By utilizing automation Apps and related software, such as Predatar’s TSMagic, you can gain an accurate understanding of the data you currently have stored in your TSM environment, allowing you to better and more effectively plan additional storage purchases and developments – if they are actually required – or accurately reduce the amount of storage you have at present.

And as TSMagic is yet to reduce an organization’s data by less than 20%, if your organization stores 350TB of data and each TB removed could save you approximately £1,000, that’s a potential saving of at least £70,000.

3. Report, review, react

One of the most basic business processes for any organization is to report, review and react on any or all activity, processes or tasks to ensure that they are operating in the most effective and successful way possible.

Through the use of automation Apps such as Predatar V6.5, not only can the running of reports be automated, but the distribution to specific people for review within the organization can be, too, meaning that individuals can review the data on a regular basis, reacting on up-to-date data whenever necessary.

For any organization utilizing a TSM environment, automation Apps can completely revolutionise how they manage their data, saving them time, resources and most importantly of all, money.