Optimizing applications and IT resources starts with policy, but it ends with people. Whether managing upgrades of devices, mitigating critical snafus and capacity issues, or performing everyday workarounds, ensuring peak performance of IT resources requires banks to make sure that IT staff, help desk and administrative personnel are heavily steeped in troubleshooting policy so they can correctly execute both the technology and the strategy.
Otherwise, you can toss away every bit of ROI expected from that pricey, high-tech monitoring tools you
convinced the bank to install, according to Bob Rickert and Michael T. O'Connor, two top IT executives at Cleveland-based KeyCorp. And Key is taking a number of steps to keep that from happening.
Rickert, KeyCorp's CTO, says implementing and fine-tuning a rigorous
IT policy to elicit quick communication of and response to IT-related difficulties small and large has enabled the institution to detect roughly half of potential problems before they become real challenges. This is compared to just one-third of such detections three years ago, and represents a reduction in overall network, application and server snafus by 78 percent over the last three years.
The crux of the policy, Rickert says, involves making sure internal complaints, events or questions are communicated immediately-not ad hoc as they were several years ago-and across departments, if necessary, to smooth and optimize operations. The idea is to get at the core cause of the problems and yank them out of the firm by the roots for good. This also prevents them from emerging again.
Weekly meetings are convened to glean and share intelligence about specific glitches and staff responses to them, and the results are aggregated and analyzed to improve both the policy and solutions applied. According to Key executives, the detection-prevention system enables the bank to avoid client impact in about half of all cases.
"It's really as much about management process, focus and organizational discipline around preventing and detecting problems as it is around tools," says O'Connor, svp of quality management at Key. "It's been a several-year process to instill that discipline into the whole organization."
Yet monitoring tools and detection controls are required, too. The right combination of people, processes and management helped Key to rid itself of what Rickert calls a "pervasive" file-storage problem plaguing the bank's shared environment, in which disk drives were quickly filling up and crashing systems or sapping server and CPU capacity.
Automatic detection applications from IBM and Tivoli were used for Key's mainframe, server and distributed environment-with Cisco's monitoring tools for its network-to auto-offload files when necessary at thresholds set by staff. The levels are set according to what specific situation or servers are involved-different capacities require different thresholds-and are tweaked via reporting and analysis.
The resulting improvement in storage management has led Key to begin laying the foundation for a storage area network, including plans to install infrastructure from Cisco.
O'Connor already oversees a command or enterprise management center powered by Cisco's enterprise console, which he calls "a monitor of monitors." The product receives alerts from all of the firm's detection applications monitoring the mainframe and the distributed environment and the network. The console provides 24/7, dashboard-like views into the operations of the enterprise.
Key executives say some of challenges involved in managing troubleshooting include calibrating the tools precisely so that the number and level of alerts are sufficient to enhance systems and protect operations, versus spewing a glut of specious warnings or catching a potentially dangerous too few.
A new wireless local area network under development at Key is presenting its own unique set of management issues, including setting device standards and testing placement of appropriate access points to secure and manage the mobile network.
"We're a little bit cautious," Rickert says. "There's a lot of opportunity to minimize the cost and expense of people moving around and related changes with a wireless LAN, but you've got to put the access points far enough inside the building so that [data] doesn't get radiated out into the street. Maybe the window washer with the PC gets it, but nobody else does."
Strong password protection is required to prevent data leaks from mobile device loss or theft as well, and restricting the types of devices the bank is willing to support is also necessary.
