Ban Bottlenecks

The Ban Bottlenecks Philosophy

Every processing minute represents hundreds or thousands of customer experiences (sales).  A capacity-related slowdown or outage by definition happens at the time of peak demand with serious financial and customer relationship consequences. Ban Bottlenecks anticipates problems before they affect processing.

Ban Bottlenecks creates heroes!

Our job is to turn your team into heroes:

• Excellent application service levels.
• No unplanned downtime.
• Planned capital improvements.
• Time to focus on the core business.

Ban Bottlenecks incorporates business performance management (BPM).

Ban Bottlenecks integrates business information into the capacity plan.  Whenever possible we include statistics which are directly related to the customer demand on the system.  These may include:

• "Transactions" as defined by the application.
• Response-based service level analysis.
• Breakout by originator.
• Breakout by authorizer.
• Breakout by product code.
• Breakout by success code.

Ban Bottlenecks is "non-reactive".

Ban Bottlenecks, like the ITIL process, implements non-reactive capacity management. Reactive management is usually implemented by waiting for an alert to go off.  For many systems, that's too late.  Non-reactive, however, requires and Ban Bottlenecks delivers:

• Data collection covering all performance objects (cpu, memory, paging, disk, communications, OS counters, processes, threads)
• Peak analysis
• Growth analysis
• Correlation of system usage to transaction traffic
• Demand forecasts and the system and network resources required to meet that demand.

Ban Bottlenecks is "hands-off".

Ban Bottlenecks does not require access to your systems.

Ban Bottlenecks fights the Heinrich Ratio.

Ban Bottlenecks detects and investigates incidents, and recommends ways to avoid a recurrence. The Heinrich Ratio developed for aviation (otherwise known as the Iceberg Model) states that for 600 non-reportable incidents there will be 30 reportable incidents, 10 accidents, and 1 fatal accident.  We believe that a similar ratio applies to IT outages, and Ban Bottlenecks identifies system instability and unusual events.

Ban Bottlenecks is a collaboration, not a product.

Ban Bottlenecks creates a collaboration between our experienced analysts and your team. We do the analysis and the tedious work, saving you time and money.  With over 16 years providing successful proactive capacity management, we have developed proven techniques and proprietary software used by our analysts to:

• Collect the data from your systems
• Analyze it on our systems
• Report it as information, elegantly
• Explain it!

Ban Bottlenecks is a closed-loop process.

Each month we hold a web conference to discuss our findings and to learn of your concerns and your plans. In addition to the “usual” topics, our analysts always ask about planned mergers, acquisitions, product promotions, and other activity which may affect your processing environment.

Ban Bottlenecks covers every minute, every component, every day.

Because of what we do and how we do it, our analysts see and report problems that no one is watching. If you have a page-fault problem or application slowdown at 3:12 a.m. on the 13th of the month, our analysts will see it and bring it to your attention.

Our data collection and analysis covers the usual suspects like CPU, memory, disk. We also check every communications line for adequate bandwidth. We check every process to ensure there are enough threads to handle the workload comfortably.

Ban Bottlenecks is long-term, and forward-looking.

We learn your systems because we maintain and report each month on a 24-month history of all the key system factors. Our analysts focus their attention on each month's peaks.

Most importantly, because we have so much detailed information about your systems, we can usually give you a 3 to 4 month's advance warning if we think you are going to hit a performance or capacity problem.

Ban Bottlenecks quickly pays for itself.

• If we help you avoid a 5 to 10 minute outage in a year, we will have saved you enough money to pay for Ban Bottlenecks for the year.
• Ban Bottlenecks saves your performance and system administration teams a bundle of time.
• Ban Bottlenecks give you the information you need to effectively plan your capital expenditures and manage the lifecycles of your systems.

Ban Bottlenecks:

• Provides the information you need to plan your capital budget in response to business conditions.
• Provides the assurance you need to know that your critical systems are ready for the future.
• Transforms your staff into heroes by freeing their time to focus on your core mission.

Performance.

Capacity.

Assurance.

 

At your service.

Click here for more information on Ban Bottlenecks.

Contact us for a sample web conference and report.