Solidcore Targets 'Change Control Gap' - First Look

« ClearApp's QuickVision Into SOAs | Main | Mergere: Broad Manageabilty's SOA Benefits »

October 09, 2006
Solidcore Targets 'Change Control Gap'

Analysts estimate that over 80 percent of system unavailability is caused by incorrectly applied changes that don’t conform to IT service management process and policies.

Bob_Vieraitis of SolidCore This “change control gap” can have unfortunate effects. Solidcore Systems’ VP of Marketing Bob Vieraitis shared one story of a hotel reservation system that let developers make changes to live systems, bringing down the network and leaving numerous guests out in the cold.

“Change is a constant in any evolving business and IT staffs area constantly firefighting to ensure that IT services reamin available,” Vieraitis said. “Mature organizations are putting together processes like ITIL and ITSM to manage change. The problem is that those processes rely heavily on people following policy and the use of manual methods.

”As a result, changes occur to the IT infrastructure that don’t conform to the policy and process. What you have is a big difference between what IT expects and the changes that actually occurs in the infrastructure,” he added.

Vieraitis then described Solidcore’s three-part approach of linking processes and infrastructure control to close the gap. They include:

1. Real-time tracking of what changes are made, who makes them and what time they were made. “This tracking in real time replaces the older scan based technology – it’s like the difference between comparing two photos and trying to figure out what happened and watching a movie to see what actually happened,” Vieraitis said.

2. Automated change reconciliation that entails documenting deviations from a ticketing system -- which Vieraitis stressed was especially important for compliance solutions.

3. Automated change policy enforcement that enforces change proactively at the endpoint – “if the change is not made at as the appropriate time, comes from an appropriate source, or not tied to an approved change ticket, we can prevent it from happening,” he noted.

In real world, Vieraitis went on to cite examples how change control had benefited companies as diverse as GM, WebEx and retailer Restoration Hardware.