Is your service provider making the grade?

Throughout my career I have been mostly on the service provider side of the house. I worked on multiple accounts and was generally assigned to the ones that were troubled. One of the things that was often brought up but rarely seen was the contract itself, or more importantly the service levels and reports that were agreed to in that contract. As time went on the players disappeared, the understanding of those service levels became a bit fuzzy, and the reports became nonexistent. Having these items is how you as a customer can ensure that your service provider is 'making the grade'.

Common SLA's and Reports related to a corporate email environment should include message delivery time as well as message totals, if the targets are missed financial penalties may be charged to the service provider. Producing reports requires keeping close tabs on your environment. Generally the service provider is required to collect this data and provide you as the customer with the final reports.

In my experience as the "service provider" I have seen the following mistakes on the customer's part:
1. The customer is unaware of what the SLA's are
2. The customer is unaware of what reports they are entitled too
3. The customer does not have access to the software used to generate the SLA's
and reports

AND the biggest mistake of all

4. The customer does not have the ability to validate the data that your service
provider gives you

What should you do to get a handle on the situation? Find out what your SLA's are and what reports you are entitled too. You could request access to the software used by your service provider but what I would recommend is using your own software. My reasoning behind this is that you are spending allot of money to your service provider, it is worth the investment to put checks and balances in place to ensure you are getting what you pay for. In addition to that your service provider is obligated only to provide you with the reports defined in the contract, having your own tool gives you the freedom to create whatever reports you'd like.

The software I recommend is Cooperteam's Mail Flow Analyzer. The software engine runs on a Windows based server and the collectors can run on many platforms. With this software you can quickly validate the SLA's as well as generate mail volume reports not only for your environment as a whole but by individual servers as well. The software also comes with a dashboard component so that you and your management team can see how your environment is performing. This would keep your service provider honest and your management team happy.

You, as the Administrator, can utilize the tool for other things as well. You can see what servers are over utilized as well as the servers that are not as busy. This information can be used to recommend load balancing or even server consolidation. You will also have the ability to search for messages and you will be able to see what types of attachments are going through your environment. This is not a tool that scans the log file to generate its information. Data is collected as messages go through the mail.box. Coooperteam offers a 30 day trial so that you can validate the power of the software. An installation takes less than an hour.

There are many more things that you can do with Mail Flow Analyzer. If you would like to check it out go to http://www.cooperteam.com. If you would like a demo of the software you can contact me at dan.huey@cooperteam.com. If you would like a price quote please contact sales.amer@cooperteam.com and provide them with the number of users in your environment.

Thanks for reading.
Huey

Who should be making the IT decisions when it comes to your Lotus Notes clients?

I have been working with Lotus Notes since R4, not as long as others but longer than some. I spent 12 years working with commercial customers for big blue and am now working for a software company which specializes in managing your Lotus Notes desktops as well as upgrading them from one version to another.

An issue that I see consistently come up is that the Notes Engineering team does not have control over the Notes client and that the Desktop team holds that responsibility. When companies make these decisions they in effect tie the hands of the experts that they pay to manage their Lotus Notes infrastructure. I am not demeaning the value of your Desktop team, they are a crucial part of your IT Engineering team, however they have a very broad focus and are not the experts when it comes to Lotus Notes.

The business I am in today is supporting Cooperteam products. With Desktop Manager you can audit not only the Notes clients in your environment but also the machines they run on. You can use Desktop Manager to make corrections on the fly or create profiles to configure and enforce settings and preferences on your client machines. With Desktop Upgrader you can upgrade your Lotus Notes clients from one version to another with minimal impact to your end user and complete control from a central database.

Often times when I am speaking with customers there is confusion in figuring out who the key players are when it comes to testing our tools or making a decision on whether to test or purchase the products. What I see from time to time is that the Domino Engineering team will try to engage the Desktop team in order to make these decisions. I agree that in most cases it's the Desktop team who installs and in some cases upgrades the Notes client on the end user machines. But is the Desktop team the best team to make the decisions on how to configure the Notes client? Would the Domino Engineer who has worked with Lotus Notes for years not be the best resource within an organization to make those decisions?

Installing the Notes client on a machine could definitely fall into the realm of the Desktop team but in my humble opinion there are decisions about configuration that should be made by the team that is responsible for the Domino infrastructure overall. After all is said and done when the user calls the Helpdesk and a ticket is assigned to a support team which team is going to get that ticket? Is the Desktop team going to take the time to ensure that the Notes client is configured to run efficiently for the end user? Is the Desktop team going to ensure that the correct icons are loaded on the workspace, that the user has created a local mail replica and replication is setup correctly?

The point I am trying to make is that the Domino Engineering team knows what applications exist in the environment, they know what common issues an end user encounters. This is the team that is aware of the new client versions coming out and what preferences can be set to make the Notes client more efficient and in turn the end user more efficient. I agree that the Desktop team has an important role, they support the actual machine that the user has in front of them. A Domino Administrator is not going to tell the Desktop team how to configure Windows or how to setup the paging file because that is not their area of expertise. That being said, why don't companies let the Domino experts that they pay manage the setup and configuration of their Lotus Notes clients?

For more information on Cooperteam products visit www.cooperteam.com

Huey