Apajove Offerings
The team of experts at Apajove help our customers with the design, implementation and support of a wide-range of technologies within the Microsoft systems management portfolio. All of our consultants are Microsoft certified and are recognised experts in their specialities.
Microsoft System Center
Management of the distributed computing environment is a complex and expensive task. The demands that businesses and organisations rightly place upon their IT departments grows every year, whilst resources are constrained and the expectations of users and business owners increases. As complexity increases and the business dependency on IT develops, the need for an adaptable, scalable and integrated management platform grows.
System Center provides industry-leading capabilities across the range of systems management requirements from server and desktop provisioning, to detailed infrastructure monitoring, IT and business process modelling and service automation. The System Center products can work in isolation or be integrated to enhance functionality. Many of our customers today have adopted the whole System Center suite to provide advanced automation capabilities in their datacentres and customer environments.
The Solution
With System Center fully deployed in the environment, our customers are providing solutions to their users to optimise and automate technical and business processes. Some examples of this are:
- Automated detection of required software updates, notification by email, approval for release by reply, automated deployment of updates into test followed by approval loop for release into live.
- Detection of website failure by Operations Manager. Automated remediation by restarting website, if fail restart IIS, if fail restart server. If still not successful raise P1 incident on Service Desk with detail of remediation attempts.
- Enable co-workers to request automated password reset.
- Manager/co-worker able to configure out of office for absent colleague
- Request for group membership automated to send approval request to AD group owner
The above processes are automated for the requesting user using Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, Orchestrator and Service Manager, putting solutions in the hands of the users without the need for the IT department. All activities are subject to approval and audited.
The System Center Suite
Operations Manger
Operations Manager provides operational monitoring of the distributed datacentre environment. From server hardware, SAN and network through hypervisor, guest OS, application, end-user perspective and DotNet and Java application monitoring, Operations Manager provides a single-console view of the environment from a technical and business centric view. Integration with Orchestrator can produce automated remediation capabilities for service degradation and failure, whilst Service Manager connectors provide alert to incident generation.
Configuration Manager
Configuration Manager provides lifecycle management for devices. From creation of an OS image, deployment, update, inventory, remote support, application deployment, anti-virus and configuration monitoring, Configuration Manager does it all. With support for Windows, OSX, Linux and UNIX as well as Android, iOS and Windows Phone via integration with Microsoft Intune, Configuration Manager is a single tool for the implementation of change in the environment.
Configuration Manager inventory, compliance and power management capabilities are used to populate the Service Manager CMDB. User-device-affinity ensures the Service Desk know the assets owned and used by a user contacting support. Orchestrator integration enables workflow for software purchase approval and deployment.
Orchestrator
Orchestrator provides advanced capabilities for the automation of processes across environments and infrastructure. We use Orchestrator runbooks in place of scripts, scheduled tasks and manual repeatable activities. A runbook might execute the leaver’s process upon request from a manager. A runbook can monitor Operations Manager for specific alert types and automate remediation. Runbooks are published via Service Manager to create automated Service Requests, enabling users in the environment to manage their own identity, requirements and enhancements without requiring direct input from IT.
Service Manager
Service Manager brings it all together. With a CMDB populated from Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, Active Directory and Virtual Machine Manager, Service Manager provides ITSM process monitoring for incident, problem and change management and advanced service request fulfilment capabilities. The process workflow exploits properties held in the CMDB to route and prioritise incidents, enable advanced approval workflow for change management and provides context to Orchestrator runbooks to ensure automated processes are populated with the right parameters.
Users can interact with incidents, problems, changes and requests they have made via email or portal. With extensions to Service Manager from our partner Cireson, analysts can access a full HTML 5 admin console, and users can leverage any device they choose for interaction. Full Software and Hardware Asset Management can be provided built on the CMDB with barcode scanning and inventory sync capabilities.
Service Manager reporting provides visibility of the entire hardware, software, asset, update and user environment as well as providing visibility of all work items across the ITSM processes.
