In common with T-Mobile, Mark’s team is using the Athene Capacity Planning and Performance Management tool from Metron. Athene is being used to capture data, monitor, analyze and report on more than 400 Unix and NT servers located around the UK. Corporate T-Mobile applications running on these systems include accounts, billing and data warehousing.
Mark Newlands “Athene has been used at T-Mobile since the late 1990s. The product is highly regarded and at T-Systems we saw absolutely no reason to look at any other tools. Given that we are responsible for a large number of widely dispersed systems, it is essential that we have a good, reliable automated data collection system – and Athene certainly fulfils this need. Athene is used to collect data twenty four hours a day. The resultant information forms an extremely important part of our everyday work.”

T-Systems is making extensive use of the Automatic Performance Reporting (APR) module within Athene. APR enables Athene users to define and produce regular performance reports, which are then generated and distributed with no user intervention. The user creates and saves the definition of the report in a template and then schedules its production. Each time the report is required, Athene automatically creates it. Object linking and embedding techniques within Athene ensure that each graph is updated with the correct data for the appropriate report period or event.

Mark Newlands: “One of the great advantages of APR within T-Systems is that it enables us to distribute the reports more widely within the company. In this way, we can raise awareness and increase understanding of how systems are performing. Although reports are currently distributed on a monthly basis with the focus on trends, we plan to use APR to make them available daily so that they can also be used for short term monitoring and management.”

Server consolidation is an area of activity currently being addressed by many organizations. Mark Newlands sees Athene’s functionality as fundamental to the success of any such projects within T-Systems.

T-Systems is a keen exponent and advocate of IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®). A concept developed by the Office of Government Commerce, ITIL® provides consistent and comprehensive documentation of best practice for IT service management. It is widely recognized that organizations are becoming increasingly dependent on IT in order to satisfy their corporate aims; this leads to an increased requirement for high quality IT services. Mark Newlands: “T-Systems are committed to delivering services that are consistent with the ITIL® standards and Athene is integral in helping us to achieve this commitment.”

He continued: “Clearly the role of Athene will become increasingly important as we grow the company’s outsourcing business.”