The Top 4 Ways to Handle Difficult Backup Environments

It may come as a surprise to you, but the administrators of backup, networks, and systems are essentially the backbone of the IT world. Did you know that these heroes are responsible for some very difficult tasks? These tasks include -but are not limited to- keeping critical business data secure and up-to-date, getting more out of existing hardware, and keeping auditors happy. Overall, they are the ones who keep the whole sphere in line.

In recent days, however, the jobs of these individuals has changed quite a bit. Virtual tape libraries (VLTs), virtual machines (VMs), and additional technologies with respect to backup have made the job of a Backup Administrator much more complicated. Also, there is more to be managed when corporate acquisitions occur. With the addition of the fact that all departments want special reports that communicate factors most relevant to them, and that finance departments want each sphere to pay for their own storage, it seems that administrators have a lot on their plates! The truth is, the plates of most Backup Administrators are full, and we haven’t even touched on compliance reports yet!

On the upside, most Backup Administrators are well-equipped to handle the large load of work now required of them. However, they are still human, and that makes them limited in terms of how much time they can spend in a particular area. For instance, because of the list of tasks mentioned above, everything takes longer. What this means is that less time can be spent on management of the entire backup sphere. This should not surprise anyone, as even administrators can only do so much! The good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel. If you are in a situation where you have too many proverbial pots on the stove with respect to your backup environment, don’t worry! Here are 4 essential tips that will help you to wrangle in those testy backup spheres.

1. Create a client backup status every day.
You must remember the importance of making the backup status of your clients clear on a daily basis. In order to do this, figure out the job information to use as your base. You can depend upon your applications to supply indicators that make this easier. Next, you must consider your backup window. Typically, you will see something like 7pm to 7am, meaning that the status of your daily backup doesn’t follow the calendar day. Bear in mind the reality of missed jobs and that everything might be communicated as “ok” because of no job to report. However, the truth is, this missed job ought to be marked as “missed.” This can be done by checking on scheduler rules. In the event of an external scheduler, this data needs to be associated with the client data in the backup product. In the end, you must decide on how you want to handle the load of many jobs. It is important to ask yourself how you would view failed jobs in the midst of several daily running jobs. In other words, would you consider something like this a success, a failure, or a partial? These factors need to be determined before you implement a daily backup status. After going through these steps, you simply need to start programming, obtaining and aggregating data, and saving the results in order to produce accurate reports.

2. Report on individual business units.

Most people that are reading this article are looking after a large amount of PCs, servers, and databases. Many of these devices are simply names on a screen, and the challenge of valuing the data on each machine is very real. In order to make these names more significant to you as the administrator, it is a good practice to pair the backup clients with the company configuration management database. This way, you will be able to collect information such as business units or the application names in a much more memorable fashion. You will also be able to begin reporting at the application or business unit level and thereby share the information with end users. Bear in mind that there are many CMDB tools in existence, and the difficulty involved in extracting specific data programmatically can be significant. In order to get this information, some people obtain an extra copy of the CMDB in a CSV file, and that way, the information is organized by columns that show the hostname, business unit name, and the application name. With the availability of this information, administrators can then map it to the storage or backup status for each individual client. As mentioned above, it can also be shared with end users, which is a huge benefit to all.


3. Report on your storage.
It is common desire for both managers and users alike to obtain knowledge about their storage usage. Likewise, teams want this information in order to accurately forecast future storage needs and additional storage purchases. Keeping a record of daily data points for all key elements is a good rule of thumb when reporting on your storage information. In order to achieve this, you must look at the raw data, compress it, and then de-dupe it, if necessary. Keep the level of granularity low, beginning with storage, and then moving on to storage pools, file systems, or shares, if applicable. Do remember that this data is only relevant for a few months after reporting. You might also want to keep track of the deduplication ratio over time when considering the VTLs or other devices relating to deduplication. The reason for this is because degradation will likely result in extra storage costs per TB of raw data, not to mention the additional processing cycles on the deduplication device.

4. Don’t wait! Be sure to automate!
You might be concerned that there will be loads of work you must do manually after reading this article. Do not fear! There are various solutions in the software world that will assist you in making many of the processes mentioned above automated. The best part of this is that your system will be equipped to perform in a proactive manner, instead in one that is reactive. By investing in appropriate software, you can be assured that your backup reporting strategy will be top-notch!

Guest blogger post by:

Amedee Potier joined Rocket Software in 2003 and is currently Senior Director of R&D, where he oversees several Rocket products in the Data Protection space. His focus is on solutions for data protection and management in heterogeneous multi-vendor and multi-platform environments.

With a Modern Storage Infrastructure, Companies Must Find an Excellent Data Management Tool

One of the more “weighty” questions within the IT world is in reference to the value of each company’s particular data. Many wonder what the true value of protected data is in the long-run, eventually view it as a cost center where money continuously gets used up. In order to make data work in the favor of a business and to help generate some income, companies must get smarter with their approaches to business and stop looking at their data this way!

The majority of companies out there admit to wanting a Big Data system as a part of their layout, but ultimately have nothing to show for these desires. There have been many failed implementations despite lots of money spent on resources to help. You might say that many businesses have the best intentions when comes to incorporating a data management plan, yet intention without action is arguably useless at the end of the day. You might wonder why companies fail to follow through on their desires for a Big Data system. Well, the answer is really quite simple. The amount of data out there is staggering, and trying to manage it all would be like trying to boil the vast ocean. You can imagine how difficult-if not impossible-that would be!

Many question if the cloud would be a good solution, and if everyone should just get started on moving their data up there. Or perhaps virtualization? Would that be the answer? These two tools are valuable, but the question stands on whether or not they are the best way to utilize company resources. What companies really need is a tool that will aid in organizing data into appropriate categories. In other words, this tool would be able to filter out what data should be implemented in order to create the most value for the company.

As stated above, the majority of corporations view their data as simply a cost center, aiding in the draining of company resources. As human nature would have it, a lot of times the attitudes in reference to existing data reflects the heart of "out with the old, in with the new," and new projects that allow for more capacity or faster processing take precedence in time and funding. It is as if the old data is a bothersome reality, always needing a little extra attention and focus, demanding greater capacity, and continuously needing backups and protection. What companies forget to keep at the forefront of their minds however, is the fact that taking care of this old and “bothersome” data is a great way to clear up space on the primary storage, and who doesn’t appreciate that? It also aids in generating a faster backup process (with a reduced backup size), which is again, a bonus for any company! It should not be so quickly forgotten that this nagging and consistently needy data is essentially the ESSENCE of the company. Would you believe that this “cost center” is also where it gains some of its income? If companies kept these points in their minds, we would not be seeing such poor practices when it comes to data management. One thing is clear however, and that is the point that initiative with managing data can be difficult, and many view the overwhelming ocean of growing data and the daunting task of trying to manage it as too great a calling to handle.

However, IT departments and administrators must bear in mind that there are tools out there to help them classify and organize data, which ultimately will be their proverbial life-boat when it comes time to accepting the challenge of managing data. Look at it this way. Let's say you are trying to find every single chemical engineer on earth. Does that sound a bit overwhelming? The question is, how would you go about doing this? After all, there are over 7 billion people on this planet! Where do you begin? Do you profile EVERY person? Of course not. What you would likely do, in order to simplify this complex process, is organizing people into broad groups, maybe by profession. After that, you would probably do something like research what particular people in that profession graduated with a degree in engineering. Though basic, you can use these same principles when narrowing down data and trying to sort through the piles of information in a company. One must use their intelligence and business knowledge to better grasp corporate data, and in return, this will help companies benefit from their data assets. In order to do this, there are tools available to help administrators better comprehend and manage their data.

These tools exist to give IT departments the upper hand in managing their spheres. Can you imagine trying to manage large amounts of company data on your own? Luckily, we don’t have to do such things, and we live in an age in which a variety of solutions are available to help companies not only survive, but thrive. These tools are out there to empower IT teams to successfully weather the storms and changing tides of data types and volumes. After using such tools, companies often experience improved storage capacity, less costs associated with backup and data protection -- and let’s not forget compliance! Compliance is a hot topic, and with the help of appropriate data management solutions, companies will be guaranteed to meet the various regulatory compliance rules in today’s business world.

In closing, it is important to note that more networking tools will not do anything close to what the appropriate data management solutions can do. Companies should be looking for solutions that can help them as well with tracking, classifying, and organizing file systems over their whole lifespan. When the right tools get into the right hands, IT managers are better able to do their jobs!


Guest blogger post:

About the author: Jason Zhang is the product marketing person for Rocket Software's Backup, Storage, and Cloud solutions.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

For a business to become optimally successful, it absolutely must incorporate a quality life-cycle management system. This begs the question: Why do so many vendors miss the mark when it comes to providing the necessary updates and enhancements? Developers and software companies should embrace their respective ALM systems as their staunch allies; and progressive IT organizations stay well ahead of the game by using progressive technology and best practices to ensure that high-quality products are on time and on budget while remaining fully compliant. The goal of any ALM supplier should be to cater to its clients by properly supporting them by staying abreast of platform enhancements and being familiar with new languages, new devices, mobile demands, ever-changing compliance regulations and other real-time demands that must be continually addressed.

The bottom line remains: in order for development leaders to not only survive, but thrive, they must make the transition to the most-updated ALM solution, possible. Surprisingly, however, development leaders can be hesitant to utilize a modern ALM solution; but the cost of doing nothing can be more expensive than one might imagine.

There are a handful of misguided reasons why an updated ALM solution might not be employed. A few of those fallacies can include the following:


A New ALM Solution Would Be Too Cost-Prohibitive
Being the lead dog and staying ahead of the pack in this competitive world is absolutely paramount which is why a vendor must provide the crucial components such as product enhancements, platform updates, etc. Research reveals some unsettling data:

• 84% of IT projects become overdue or over budget 
• 31% of IT projects never reach completion due to being canceled 
• Completed IT projects deliver, on average, only 42% of their expected benefits 

Accuracy and efficiency become the name of the game as it applies to profit; but developers' profit margins will be sorely compromised without up-to-date functionality and access to current tools via an up-to-date ALM system. Additionally, if no automated system is integrated, IT will be forced to spend a good deal of valuable time addressing compliance-related issues; and that can be costly.

Your vendor's R&D department should certainly be acutely aware of new trends in the industry as well as responsive to customer’s requests. A coveted ALM solution will incorporate 1) on-board templates for compliance reporting 2) compatibility and remote access with any mobile device 3) tools such as dashboards, real-time reports & analytics and automated work-flows – all, of which, enable every team-member to stay up-to-date.

The cost of doing nothing can take a titanic toll when one considers that not meeting app-release time-lines as well as opportunities that become lost in the shuffle plus valuable time addressing compliance concerns and/or audits all cost a business, big-time! The question, then, becomes obvious: You believe you can't afford the integration of a modern ALM solution – but can you afford NOT to??


Our Current ALM Solution Seems to be Working Fine
In order to effectively, efficiently and optimally monitor, manage and coordinate all the people, processes, changes and dynamics that are intricately involved in the application life-cycle, utilizing the most sophisticated ALM solution is key! Development personnel feel the demands of deploying functionality and fixes, very quickly. The IT setting is extremely complex; and in this environment, database servers, web servers, diverse clientele and every type of mobile device equate to sophisticated development and release processes. All this must be intricately orchestrated without a hitch; and a modern ALM solution is what it takes to fully ensure a flawless and seamless operations in every department.

With the most modern ALM solution, users can enjoy the ease at which systems and work-flows come together in addition to the minimization of production errors and the maximization of collaboration efforts. Then, imagine all this coupled with data access from any mobile device, compliance reports with point-and-click ease and automation processes that are as easy as child's play.

Older ALM solutions are just that 'old' and with that, comes the inability for an archaic solution tool to offer the newest of technologies which equates to lost time due to fixing bad code and dealing with coding errors, as only a single example. And then, of course, there is the lost revenue. In the end, the growth of a company is stifled. Again, a modern ALM solution keeps a business in position as the 'alpha' and leader of the competitive pack since the people and processes involved are all humming like a fine-tuned engine – no, barricades, no inefficiency and virtually no errors.


Transitioning to a New ALM Would Be Too Time-Consuming
How one chooses a vendor can make the difference between reaping the benefits of a dedicated and seasoned professional with an unparalleled product that he or she is excited to share, verses a vendor whose interest in your goals and progress is marginal, at best. Assuming the right vendor has been selected, the time required to get the system fully running will be miniscule. Personnel can very quickly enjoy immediate visibility, coordination and management across distributed systems, teams and tools. In the end, previously-lost revenue due to outdated ALM systems becomes a distant memory since teams will no longer contend with drawn-out, manual processes but will, now, have the updated abilities to very quickly communicate, collaborate, update etc. regarding any and all application projects.

Not one single team-member needs to concern him or herself with transitioning into an updated system. A committed vendor will make sure the necessary and expected support is entirely available for everyone involved. Again, in the end, any time invested in becoming familiar with a new ALM solution will begin to immediately pay for itself due to optimized usability involving real-time visibility, flexibility, accuracy and automation.


Our Current ALM Serves Only Development
When a business chooses stagnation over progress, it can become the 'kiss of death' for the organization. Because technology will never slow down or even reach an apex, a business absolutely must stay on track with innovative ideas, processes and insights. An integrated ALM system ensures that users can take full advantage of managing, in real-time, every aspect of development and delivery. A top-tier ALM solution will provide instantaneous updates on every component ranging from code to work-flow to dashboards and everything in-between and beyond. Smarter, more-insightful decisions become common-place among everyone involved – whether development personnel, auditors, programmers, etc. Since DevOps departments evolve and advance in the enterprise, so too, must the ALM system by functioning as the centralized collaborative arena where inter-department communications are available whenever and wherever required.

After it's all said and done, switching to a modern ALM solution will, realistically, save money over the long haul since time is being dramatically saved – and time is money! Those few words serve as a cliché as well as a fact. Whether one is speaking of departments collaborating on changes at any level, or enhanced visibility that maximizes work-flow or whether one is talking about users gaining advanced capabilities resulting in succinct, precise and quick decision-making, it all adds up, once again, to saving copious amounts of time which translates into saving impressive amounts of revenue.

A reliable vendor will provide the kind of support one would expect from a supplier that operates as a top-tier contender in the industry. Vendor support should include:

• Access to the most up-dated interfaces and devices 
• Assistance with any existing OS 
• Intervention for all platforms, on which, code is being developed 
• Mobile and web development 
• Out-of-the-box plug-ins to converge with other tools 
• Compliance-report templates 
• Delivery of single-screen visibility with all IT involvement 
• Adjustable point-and-click distribution and deployment and mobile functionality with everything 

It is an ever-changing business climate where technology is king. And...

Adaptation equals growth and growth equals SUCCESS!



Guest blogger post:

About the author: Daniel Magid is Rocket’s IBM i solution leader and Director of the Rocket Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and DevOps lab. Having started his career at IBM in 1981 in the midrange computer division, Daniel brings to Rocket Software more than 30 years of experience in the IBM midrange marketplace. Prior to coming to Rocket as part of the acquisition of Aldon in 2011, Daniel was Aldon’s CEO and Chief Product Strategist. Daniel led the growth of Aldon from a small 4 person consulting company to the largest provider of ALM and DevOps solutions in the IBM i market. Daniel is a recognized expert in application development and DevOps in the IBM i market and a well-known presence at IBM i conferences.

Database Migration and Integration using AWS DMS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently released a product called AWS Data Migration Services (DMS) to migrate data between databases.

The experiment

I have used AWS DMS to try a migration from a source MySQL database to a target MySQL database, a homogeneous database migration.

The DMS service lets you use a resource in the middle Replication Instance - an automatically created EC2 instance - plus source and target Endpoints. Then you move data from the source database to the target database. Simple as that. DMS is also capable of doing heterogeneous database migrations like from MySQL to Oracle and even synchronous integrations. In addition AWS DMS also gives you a client tool called AWS Schema Converter tool which helps you convert your source database objects like stored procedures to the target database format. All things a cloud data integration project needs!

In my experiment and POC, I was particularly interested in the ability of the tool to move a simple data model as below, with 1-n relationship between tables t0(parent) and t1(child) like below.

(Pseudo code to quickly create two tables t0, t1 with 1-n relationship to try it. Create the tables both on source and target database)

t0 -> t1 Table DDL (Pseudo code)

CREATE TABLE `t0` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `txt` varchar(100) CHARACTER SET ucs2 DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

CREATE TABLE `t1` (
  `id` mediumint(9) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `t0id` int(9) DEFAULT NULL,
  `txt` char(100) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `t0id` (`t0id`),
  CONSTRAINT `t1_ibfk_1` FOREIGN KEY (`t0id`) REFERENCES `t0` (`id`) ON DELETE CASCADE
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;


In this experiment, I didn't want to see just a migration, a copy, of a table from source database to a target database. I was interested more to see how easy is to migrate a data model - with Primary Key and Foreign Key relationship in place -  from the source database to the target database with zero downtime and using their CDC (Changed data Capture) or Ongoing-Replication migration option and capabilities of AWS DMS. That is, zero downtime database migration.

Here are the results of the experiment.

AWS DMS is ubiquitous, you can quickly set-up an agent (Replication Instance) and define source & target endpoints and start mapping your tables to be migrated from source database to target database with the tool. All conveniently using the AWS console.

Once you setup your replication instance and endpoints, create a Migration Task (say Alpha) and do an initial full migration (load) from the source database to the target database. Do this with the foreign keys (FKs) disabled on the target. This is a recommendation in the AWS DMS Guide in order to dump the data super fast as it does it with parallel threads, at least this is the recommendations for MySQL targets.

Then you can create a second Migration Task (say Beta) using a different endpoint, but this time with the foreign keys enabled on the target. You can do this even before your full load with Alpha to avoid waiting times. Configure Beta interface/task to run forever and let it integrate and sync the delta which occurred during the initial load. You can even start the Beta interface from a cut-off timestamp point. It uses source MySQL database's binlogs to propagate the changes. If you don't create beta interface, that is to use a different endpoint for the target with the parameter which enables the FKs, the DELETE SQL statements on the source which occur during the migration will not propagate to the target correctly and the CASCADEs to the child tables will not work on the target. CASCADE is a property of the Foreign Key.

To reconcile, to find out if you have migrated everything, I had to count the rows in each table on source and the target databases to monitor and see if it all worked. To do that I used Pentaho Spoon CE to quickly create a job to count the rows on both source and target database and validate migration/integration interfaces.

Overall, I found AWS DMS very easy to use, it quickly helps you wire an integration interface in the Cloud and start pumping and syncing data between sources and targets databases be it on Premise or Cloud. A kind of Middleware setup in AWS style, in the Cloud. No more middleware tools for data migration, AWS now has it's own. 

LEVERAGE GEOGRAPHICALLY-DISTRIBUTED DEVELOPMENT

As technology advances at warp speed, there are certain tech methodologies that will go by the wayside to make room for more advanced and efficient versions; and how development projects are managed is a case, in point. Companies in every industrialized nation of the world are embracing Geographically-Distributed Development or GDD, which has embedded itself an impressive and proof-positive IT strategy model. Outdated procedures that have been utilized for the administration of virtually any type of development project have been limited to one or several building sites. That was then; this is now.


Let’s take a look at the advantages that GDD offers:

• decreased labor expenses 
• increased availability to skilled resources
• reduced time-to-market, with round-the-clock flexible staffing

The beauty of GDD is that is allows enterprises, regardless of location, to respond to changes in business circumstances as they happen. Any feedback can be presented, instantaneously, within a global framework.

In order for GDD to achieve its vast benefit potential, major barriers that might impede an enterprise’s successes must be reduced to a minimum or entirely eliminated within the GDD strategy. It is crucial that increased expenses associated with communication and coordination logistics that occur on an international level within a globally-distributed market, be uncovered and targeted. If communication and coordination-specific expenses are allowed to flourish, the very benefits of GDD can be sorely compromised. Various challenges must be reckoned with: 1) cultural variances 2) language differences and 3) inaccessibility to time-sensitive information. These can all jeopardize the progress of distributed projects.

GDD is oblivious to location. it is an IT strategy model without borders. This allows development team-members to work collectively and cohesively within a city, across state lines or beyond continents. A site or sites might be engaged with one particular software-development venture while one or more outsourcing companies work, simultaneously, towards the projected goal. Outsourcing companies would contribute their efforts and expertise, like a fine-tuned engine, within the software’s project-development cycle. Optimized efficiency and cost savings, via structured and coordinated local or global team-work, becomes refreshingly realized.

With GDD, thorough and clear communication is established between all team members and project coordination. Business demands incorporate global-sourcing, service-oriented architecture, new compliance regulations, new development methodologies, reduced release cycles and broadened application lifetimes. Because of this, highly-effective, unencumbered communication is mission-critical; and a necessity arises that begs for a solution that has the power to:

• Provide management visibility of all change activities among distributed development teams 
• Integrate and automate current change processes and best practices within the enterprise
• Organize the distribution of dependent change components among platforms and teams
• Protect intellectual property

Track and authenticate Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Engaging an organization to efficiently manage and significantly optimize communication among all stakeholders in the change process is a priceless component of an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution. Multiple GDD locales present inherent challenges: language and cultural divides, varying software-development methods, change-management protocol, security employment, adherence to industry mandates and client business requisites. The good news is the ALM solution tackles these hurdles with ease!


Provide Management Visibility of all Change Activities among Distributed Development Teams
When a centralized repository allows for the viewing of all the activities, communications and artifacts that could be impacted by the change process, you have beauty in motion; and this is what ALM does. Via ALM, users have the luxury of effortlessly viewing project endeavors by each developer, development group or project team--irrespective of location, platform and development setting. This type of amenity becomes especially striking when one begins to compare this model-type with other distributed environments where work-in-progress is not visible across teams due to niche teams employing their own code repositories.

ALM provides the opportunity for development managers to not only track, but validate a project’s standing. A project’s status can be verified which helps to guarantee the completion of tasks. User-friendly dashboards will alert management if vital processes indicate signs of sluggishness or inefficiency.

ALM ensures that the overall development objectives will be met on a consistent basis. This is accomplished through the seamless coordination between both remote and local development activities. The ALM-accumulated data plays a crucial role with boosting project management, status tracking, traceability, and resource distribution. Development procedures can be continually improved upon, thanks to generated reports that allow for process metrics to be collected and assessed. Also, ALM allows regulatory and best-practices compliance to be effortlessly monitored and evaluated. Compliance deals with structuring the applicable processes and creating the necessary reports. ALM executes compliance strategy and offers visibility to the needed historical information, regardless of users’ geographic locations.


Integrate and Automate Current Change Processes and Best Practices within the Enterprise
In a perfect world, each and every facet of a company’s application development would be super easy; and with ALM it is. By way of ALM, companies can establish the defined, repeatable, measureable and traceable processes based on best practices, with absolute perfection. User-friendly point-and-click set-up functions enable one to create a collection of authorized processes that automate task assignments and movement of application artifacts.

ALM permits the streamlining of change management by means of its simplicity when dealing with changes and necessary proceedings. This in turn means changes can be analyzed and prioritized. The approval management functions demand that official authorizations must be secured before any changes are permitted to go forth. The ATM’s automated logging functions totally un-complicate the tracking of software changes. This is huge since changes can be tracked from the time a request is received up to the time when a solution is submitted to production.

Every member that is part of the global development team would be duly notified regarding any required assignments as well as any happenings that would have an impact on their efforts.


Organize the Distribution of Dependent Change Components among Teams and Platforms
It’s no secret that when there are changes within just one system of a cohesive enterprise, those changes can impact other systems. ALM offers multi-platform support which ensures that modifications made on disparate platforms, by way of geographically-dispersed teams can be navigated through the application lifecycle jointly. A Bill of Materials Process, or BOMP, serves as an on-board feature that permits users to create file portfolios that incorporate characteristics from various platforms. This means those portfolios can travel through the lifecycle as a unit. Additionally, some ALM solutions absolutely ensure that the parts within the assemblies are positioned with the suitable platforms at each state of the lifecycle.


Protect Intellectual Property
An ALM solution is the perfect component that allows for access and function control over all managed artifacts. Managers are in a position to easily determine and authorize any access to vital intellectual property due to ALM functioning on a role-based control system. The role-based structure means administrative operations are streamlined which permits any system administrator to bypass assigning individual rights to a single user. Additionally, a role-based system delivers a clearly-defined synopsis of access rights between groups of individuals.

Track and Authenticate Service Level Agreements
The overall project plan, absolutely, must remain on schedule while administering accountability for established deliveries; and this can be easily realized through ALM’s ability to track and authenticate tasks and processes. The ALM solution caters to satisfying Service Level Agreement (SLA) requirements within an outsourcing contract. As a result, project management is enhanced by ensuring performance of specific tasks. Optimizing the user’s ability to track emphasized achievements is made possible due to the consistency between tasks that have been assigned to developers and tasks that are part of the project plan. Invaluable ALM-generated reports will track response and resolution times; and service-level workflows automate service processes and offer flexibility. This translates into an acceleration of processes to the respective resources to meet project deadlines. The ability to track performance against service-level agreements is made possible due to the availability of reports and dashboards that are at one’s fingertips.


Enhance Your Geographically-Distributed Development
As stated, ALM is beauty in motion; and aside from promoting perfected-levels of communication and coordination, it utilizes management strategies designed to plow through any obstructions that have the potential to compromise success. ALM’s centralized repository is purposed to present multiple ideas, designs, dialogue, requirements, tasks and much more to team-members who would require or desire instant access to data. Development procedures and tasks can be precisely and efficiently automated and managed due to ALM’s cohesive workflow capabilities. Vital intellectual property, all of it is embedded and safeguarded in a central repository. Due to this caliber of reinforced protection, loss and unauthorized access is null and void. When remote software development is in-sync with local development, project management becomes seamless, highly-coordinated and error-free. Integration of the monitoring, tracking and auditing of reports and dashboards means management can successfully satisfy project deadlines. It would behoove any enterprise who wishes to reap the rewards of GDD to fully embrace ALM as its solution, it is truly mission-critical.


Application Lifecycle Management Solutions
Application lifecycle management programs are able to easily deliver a plethora of enterprise software modifications and configuration management facilities. ALM solutions have the ability to support the needs of multiple groups of geographically-distributed developers. Business process automation services, designated to automate and enforce on-going service delivery processes throughout enterprise organizations, is a vital component of ALM solutions. Within those groups of geographically-distributed developers, the product continues to reveal the magnitude of its talents since it: targets permission-based assignment and enforcement services, caters to role-based interfaces which allows support for developers, software engineers, project managers, IT specialists, etc, delivers enterprise application inventory-management services, oversees and coordinates large software inventories and configurations, guards user access, manages differing versions of application code, supports the existence of concurrent development projects, coordinates a diversity of release management facilities.

Guest blogger post:

Mike Miranda is a writer concerning topics ranging from Legacy modernization to Application life cycle management, data management, big data and more.