How To Improve IT Operations Using Performance Enhancing Data

Performance Enhancing Data in the business world? That’s right, the use of performance enhancing data (PED) has become necessary to keep up with client demands for stricter service levels, and to facilitate zero downtime environments. Performance Enhancing Data is also helpful in capacity planning and can provide predictive analytics that enable proactive management of Information Technology environments.

To illustrate the importance of this type of comprehensive, real-time data delivery, consider stock market trading prior to computerization. If you wanted to buy or sell stock before online trading was available, you called a broker on the phone and asked him or her to place an order. To track stock prices, you either look them up in the newspaper or follow them on a ticker. Way back, people visited brokerage houses to trade, where they used chalkboards as their buy and sell mechanism. Researching stocks and their performance was also more challenging. Stocks were likely traded based on tips, pushy brokers or in reaction to specific, after-the-fact news. Looking back, it’s a wonder any investors achieved their objectives.

Today, stock data is much easier to obtain. You can easily check pricing online in just about real-time, review the performance of a specific equity over specified time periods, research the company’s financial performance, and review current events about the company. In aggregate, you can review the overall performance of your portfolio. As a result, you make better decisions quicker and have the ability to see results almost immediately.

Information Technology infrastructure information, like current data available to investors, can provide a significant advantage to the user at the click of a mouse. A collection of information on how your systems are performing, how they have been performing over a period of time, and how they may perform in the future significantly improves decision-making. An Operations Team armed with this capability has an entirely new set of capabilities available to them. If the team only observes faults today, all they know is that an incident occurred. Their diagnostic capabilities are limited and their problem identification and resolution are likely slow and inconsistent. Further, they are likely heavily dependent on level 2 and 3 support teams. If that same Operations Team has Performance Enhancing Data, they can review detailed information, resolve the incident or, at the very least, they can pass along key information to aid root cause identification.

There are many means of obtaining Performance Enhancing Data, but there is only one way to make it useful: the collection of data has to be comprehensive and available in real-time. Once captured, the use of agile analytics to dissect and present the data will have a meaningful impact on system availability.