FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
COMPANY PRODUCTS TECHNICALWho is The Information Systems Manager, Inc. (ISM)?
Founded in 1987, ISM is a privately held company based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Our performance and capacity management software and services are used by leading companies around the globe.
What is ISM's sales model?
ISM uses direct and channel sales models in the U.S., and channel sales, internationally.
ISM certifications or affiliations?
ISM is a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider and a member of IBM's PartnerWorld® for Developers. ISM's PerfMan is part of the IBM Server Proven program.
What are the specific financial benefits of ISM's PerfMan products?
ISM's PerfMan products often pay for themselves within days or weeks of installation. In a shop of 500 Windows servers, savings of between $200,000 and several million dollars can be realized. One of ISM's z/Architecture clients deferred more than $1.5 million in hardware and software expenditures simply by installing PerfMan and finding hidden processing resources enabling them to extend the life of their existing investment. Return On Investment (ROI) will vary by client; yet independent reviews of client experiences show that ISM's PerfMan will touch the major ROI components of capital and operational cost as well as revenue and client satisfaction/retention.
How can PerfMan help us meet business objectives?
PerfMan allows you to obtain the highest levels of competitive advantage from your IT investment. In addition to increasing the competitive value of IT, PerfMan enables pinpoint precision in IT budgeting, eliminates wasteful over-provisioning and risky under-provisioning of IT resources, and provides state-of-the-art, automated communication, providing on-demand information and analysis to those who need it.
Why is Performance & Capacity planning important? What real value does it provide?
Capacity management plays a critical role in any enterprise seeking to control hardware, software and operational expenses while optimizing performance, dependability and agility. Poor or nonexistent capacity management is the root cause of unmet SLAs, reduced business agility, inaccurate budgeting and excessive spending. The following summarizes the basic value of capacity management:
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Competitive advantage - Disciplined capacity management ensures that necessary resources are available to support today's critical business needs and deftly respond to new challenges and opportunities, all while avoiding unnecessary risk and expense. IT built on a foundation of factual information and insightful analysis enables corporate leadership to make timely, well-informed decisions on strategic directions, initiatives, acquisitions, mergers and other opportunities requiring a high-degree of understanding of IT capabilities and potential. |
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Customer satisfaction and retention of clients - In today's demanding business environment, where your competitors are merely a mouse-click away from your customers, your business applications must run predictably. Reduced customer/prospect satisfaction will translate over time to reductions in revenues, customer base, and for in-house IT organizations; outsourcing. |
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Maximized operational & capital IT investment - Every year CIO's are asked to do more with the same or less resources. A holistic view of IT is required to maximize productivity and investment. Sophisticated, yet easy to use enterprise capacity management provides the holistic view and insightful information needed to base critical business decisions on facts rather than guesswork. |
PRODUCT FAQs
What is PerfMan?
PerfMan is ISM's integrated suite of software products providing enterprisewide IT performance and capacity management. PerfMan software is designed to transform IT complexity to clear, insightful and understandable information and analysis.
Which platforms does ISM's PerfMan support?
How does PerfMan reduce IT complexity?
PerfMan products employ highly sophisticated capacity management methodologies. PerfMan users access this built-in sophistication through an intuitive, Windows-based management console called PerfMan Analyst. The familiar, easy-to-use navigation and grouping features of PerfMan Analyst provides both a "Big Picture" view of the entire IT infrastructure, as well as precise, "drill-down" capabilities used to identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks, model the effects of workload change, and see short-, mid- and long-term trends.
What do you mean by "enterprisewide?"
PerfMan products provide performance and capacity management capabilities for every major enterprise operating platform including z/Architecture, Windows, UNIX and Linux, as well as major subsystems and DBMSs such as Exchange, IIS, SQL Server, Oracle, CICS TS and DB2. Web servers, tape libraries and networks can also be managed with PerfMan.
All of those IT components require very different management disciplines and expertise. Will I have to hire special performance and capacity management staff to use PerfMan?
No, PerfMan's unique architecture allows for a single point of contact with all these systems with no need to re-learn interfaces as you move between system types. Each PerfMan product identifies the key metrics and management processes of its target system. As a result, PerfMan brings the sophistication to the user, rather than the other way around.
What differentiates ISM's PerfMan from other competing technologies?
While PerfMan provides technical advantages over various competitors, such as being the innovator of Windows agentless technology and out-of-the-box tuning/debugging capabilities, PerfMan's greatest advantages are its ease-of-use, flexibility and customer service. ISM understands that our clients' capacity management staff is often limited or even nonexistent. To ensure our clients' success, we provide answers to the most common capacity questions as well as an ability to drill down into the details as needed.
Does ISM's PerfMan interface with the major system framework offerings?
PerfMan can accept and provide input to IBM Tivoli and CA Unicenter.
How does PerfMan provide "state-of-the-art communications benefits?"
IT customers can automatically be provided current-use and historical trending information and analysis via automated e-mail, page, or cell phone alerts and/or web-based reports, any time of day and anywhere in the world. Service Level Agreement performance reports, application usage, server performance, transactional metrics, storage resources-whatever IT information you need to regularly communicate, can automatically be collected and directly sent or posted to corporate intranet or extranet sites for on-demand availability.
Can I get PerfMan as a service?
Yes, all PerfMan for OS/390 or z/OS offerings can be provided as a service to outsource the day-to-day performance and capacity management activity. A monthly executive summary and book of reports are sent directly to your company, a softcopy version is available via your intranet or our secured internet site, and a file containing your processed performance and capacity data is sent to you for access via PerfMan Analyst. Services for other PerfMan offerings will be done on a request basis.
Is PerfMan "security friendly?"
Yes. PerfMan's collection technologies support secure shell protocol and require minimal access rights. As new security initiatives develop, ISM will make the necessary changes to ensure that PerfMan solutions continue to be security friendly.
TECHNICAL FAQs
What inputs does PerfMan require?
PerfMan uses standard performance & capacity inputs from the various supported systems and subsystems. In the case of UNIX/Linux, where a remote performance and capacity collection agent may not always be included with the operating system, ISM provides a collection agent.
Which metrics does PerfMan collect?
Each PerfMan product includes a wide array of default metrics designed to meet the needs of the vast majority of customers. PerfMan also allows for metrics and data sources not traditionally part of PerfMan's data collection to be inputted into the PerfMan performance and capacity database. If application or business information is desired to be part of the analysis, contact ISM to inquire on how this may be done.
How disruptive is the installation of ISM's PerfMan?
ISM's offerings have been designed to be non-disruptive to install and operate. While many performance and capacity management tools must be deployed, taking weeks to months, ISM's PerfMan is installed in hours to days. Examples of the non-disruptive nature of PerfMan products include:
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PerfMan for Windows agentless technology, with no need for administrator rights on managed servers |
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PerfMan for UNIX SSH support to ensure PerfMan is security friendly. |
To what components of an enterprise IT environment can PerfMan bring clarity?
PerfMan can provide clarity to the majority of IT components, be it hardware or software. PerfMan allows for a clear and understandable view of servers, storage, networks, switches, operating systems, subsystems/applications, and databases.
Can PerfMan be used in an environment with virtual servers?
Absolutely. PerfMan recognizes each virtual server as its own independent environment and will report on each virtual server within a specific physical server. PerfMan users can group some or all the virtual servers together to provide the desired view of a physical server. This ability to pick and choose what is included and what is not allows for infinite control when considering consolidations or simply modeling a new environment to be placed on the server.
Do I have to install the PerfMan Collector on each desired Windows system?
No. The PerfMan Collector once installed on an Windows server will automatically pull performance data from managed Windows 2000/XP/2003 servers and workstations on the network without having to install any additional software on those systems. PerfMan for Windows is an agentless technology. For large environments, contact PerfMan for details on deployment of multiple or remote collectors.
Are there any software or disk requirements to collect data from a managed Windows system, ?
No. PerfMan Collector is a sophisticated "agentless" technology. It collects data from any number of managed systems without requiring special software or using any disk space on the managed systems.
From how many managed systems can a single PerfMan Collector collect data?
There is no logical limit on the number of systems a single PerfMan collector can manage. The number of metrics collected and the frequency of polling will determine what's practical within a specific environment. A single collector accessing default metrics can easily handle more than 1,000 managed servers.