The ISO Network Management Model

The rumor on how Disney uses Network Management. When the temperature rises on the park grounds at Disneyland all the prices of the beverage vending machines automatically goes up by 10% to fully capitalize on consumer demand. I believe that is an old Information Technology rumor to explain how network management works... at least I hope it is a rumor.

Why Network Management is important.

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More and more organizations depend on their networks. Business' the depend heavily on the status of their networks must have network management tools as they grow. If a network dependent business such as ebay, Google, Yahoo and many others go down for even a few minutes, they can loose literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales and even a small piece of their customer's confidence which could in turn affect the value of their stock. When every second of network time counts the system must be monitored continuously. The most cost effective way to do this is to use an automated network management tool.

Network Management Standards

The International Organization for Standards (ISO) addresses the five major functional area of the Network Management Model as performance management, accounting management, configuration management, fault management and security management.

Performance Management

Performance management is monitoring, assessing, and adjusting the available bandwidth and network resource usage in order make a network run more efficiently. Performance management is a very important part of the network management model particularly to the business and/or organization that wants to streamline their network's performance. SolarWinds is a great tool for performance management.

Accounting Management

Accounting management monitors and assesses the usage of data and/or resources for the purpose of billing. This aspect of the network management is by Internet Service Providers to bill customers for the resources they use.

Configuration Management

The configuration side of network management is for tracking the hardware and software versions on the network to identify their effects on the network's operation. An example of this is Microsoft's System Management Server (SMS) which has the capability to monitor, manage and track every piece of software and hardware on a given network.

Fault Management

Fault Management is what most people think of when they think of network management. The purpose of this area of network management is to detect, log and alert the system administrators of problems that might effect the systems operations.

Security Management

Security Management deals with controlling access to resources and even alerting the proper authorities when certain resources are accessed. In the same way that a network manager can be paged or emailed when a resource goes down, network management systems can be used to send messages when certain files, servers or routers is accesses. Intrusion detection systems such as Symantec's Intruder Alert have this security management capability.

There are many products that support some or even all of these areas of network management. What most network management systems have in common is their use of protocols such as Simple Network Management Protocols (SNMP), SNMPv3, and Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP). There are a variety of Network Management tools ranging from Intuit's Network Management Software to IBM's Tivoli, Fidelia's Helix to AdventNet. Maybe your network management solution does not include a system that increases vending machine prices as the heat rises, but you can definitely find what you need among these and other excellent tools on the market.

References:

Cisco. Network Management Basics. Cisco.com. Feb 2002

http://www.cisco.com/

RFC 1157. Simple Network Management Protocol.

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1157.html

Wikipedia. Network Management. Wikipedia.org.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_management

ITPRC. Network Management. Itprc.com

http://www.itprc.com/nms.htm

The ISO Network Management Model

Robert Elam is a System Security Engineer who works for the U.S. government.

You can find a more detailed version of this and other articles at his blog, http://elamb.org.

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Microsoft Dynamics Gp Business Portal Implementation - Requisition Management Highlights

If your company has Microsoft Great Plains ERP implemented and needs upgrade from older version of eRequisition, eOrder, eEmployee, then you are probably looking to Microsoft Great Plains Business Portal implementation, where former eXXX modules are moved and redesigned on Sharepoint and .Net platform. Currently version 7.5, where eRequisition module was part of as ASP application, is not longer supported by Microsoft Business Solutions. Here we would like to highlight Requisition Management functionality:

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o Approval Hierarchy. As Requisition Management module is intended for formalized purchasing workflow of public corporation or large business, approval process is the core of the workflow logic. Approval Hierarchy design is represented by graphical tree. There is one thing in Requisition Management administration guide which is not really clear - you should have all the non-managerial employees listed on the lowest level of the approval hierarchy (not in the form of the hierarchical list, but on the same lowest level)

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o Requisition Creation. If you think about the employee, who initially files the purchase request (requisition) - you don't expect this person to know such details, as GP Inventory Control Item number, Item price, GL distribution account, vendor - you rather expect requisition creator to give you generic description of what he would like to be purchased. These generic purchase request is made possible via business portal user security.

o Requisition Approval. There are two types of approval: just approval and so-called final approval. Decision maker final approval capabilities are restricted by her/his approval dollar limit

o Purchase Order Creation. You can naturally merge approved requisitions lines with existing purchase order for the same vendor as well as merge similar approved requisition lines. At the step of PO creation, all required requisition line fields must be identified: item number (if it is inventoried item), vendor ID, account, site ID, price

o Notifications. BP RM module setup allows you to send email notification (in the current version in plain text, without hyperlink to BP login/document). You should be aware about notification scope: when requisition is approved and submitted to Microsoft Dynamics GP - in GP you don't have notification functionality - you can alternatively implement it as SQL triggers with email notification.

Microsoft Dynamics Gp Business Portal Implementation - Requisition Management Highlights

Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Group, http://www.albaspectrum.com

help@albaspectrum.com 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving Microsoft Dynamics GP USA and Canada nationwide: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Windsor, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Pittsburg, Toledo, Indianapolis, Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Seattle, San Diego, Phoenix, Austin. Local service is available in Chicago and Houston metros: Rosenberg, Katy, Richmond, Dallas, Galveston, Sugar Land, Naperville, Wheaton, Plainfield, Aurora, Wheaton, Downers Grove, Lisle, Oakbrook, Morris, Marseilles, Joliet, Montgomery, Oswego, DeKalb. With reasonable travel we serve Springfield, Bloomington, Normal, Peoria, LaSalle, Ottawa, Dixon

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