Remedy: report from BMC Lisbon workshop

Tuesday 10 Jun 2008, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Zurich

513-1-021 (CERN)

Maciej attended the BMC UserWorld 2008 workshop held in Lisbon 19-22 May 2008. He will report on what he has learned there regarding the Remedy product.

Slides BMC_UserWorld2008-report.pptx

Present: Maciej Stepniewski (IT/FIO), Eric Grancher (IT/DES), Nick Ziogas (IT/UDS), Nicole Cremel (IT/UDS), Sebastien Costa (TS/ASE), Manuel Gonzalez (IT/CO), Sebastian Lopienski (IT/FIO), Vincent Dore (IT/FIO), Veronique Lefebure (IT/FIO), Zhechka Toteva (IT/FIO), Flavio Costa (FI/DI).

• Maciej presented what he had learned on the BMC UserWorld 2008 workshop, held in Lisbon on 19-22 May 2008.
  • The good news – BMC continues to work hard on improvement of their products and on introducing new features.
    • Tools – ARSystem, CMDB (Configuration Management DB), Service Catalog, Service Level Management
    • BMC suggests techniques for load balancing (failover):
      • ARSystem server
        • We can use it only as a failover, because (Vincent) “a second ARSystem server requires an additional license”. (Veronique) “The second server can be used only in case of failure – we have license for this.”
      • Mid-tier
        • No licenses needed, but what will we gain to have load balancing (or even only a failover)?
        • Maciej: The performance problems of the web interface will not be solved. Used as a fail-over mechanism it will save the manual interventions.
    • All the APIs in Java.
    • New IDE, that is expected to replace of the “Remedy Administrator” tool
      • implemented as an Eclipse plug-in
      • supports CVS, debugging facilities for escalations and filters, locking of objects (avoid concurrent access in development mode)
      • will satisfy the “Look and Feel” requirement of the administrators and developers
  • BMC products usage: BMC tools using ARSystem / home-made tools, tools bought from BMC and customized or tools bought from another company using ARSystem = 30% / 70%
  • New licensing handling mechanism.
• Problems discussed:
  • Web user interface – slow performance – reasons:
    • Maciej:
      • 1. Large volume of transferred data - less fields on the web forms will reduce the response time.
      • 2. Complex workflows - the large number of active links slows down the web client.
    • Zhechka:
      • Could the performance be improved by removing the unnecessary communication between ARSystem and the mid-tier?
    • Maciej: Some active links have to be re-implemented as filters.
    • Nick: What about a new system? Especially for the web interface. Jira is a potential candidate.
    • Veronique: The new requirements from the help desk and other users of Remedy at CERN will be gathered and summarized. The current status and knowledge will be consolidated with the future needs. Then a decision will be taken how we will proceed.
• Conclusions from the presentation:
  • BMC ARSystem is widely used – a lot of clients and know how.
  • We can profit more of it with ”better development".
  • System is far from being used in optimal way. We know how to use it better, but we lack manpower to do it.