My apologies in advance for asking a rather "low-brow"
question.
What software is available/recommended for NOC contact
management?
I assume that big networks use CRM type stuff (probably
heavily customized), integrated into the OSS and other
operational systems.
What about for the rest of the world? Is there any decent
(free, proprietary, or home-grown) software that can do
contact management justice (either as a complete package or
integration of multiple packages), supporting features like:
- contact information refresh (regularly verify contact
information via electronic or triggered human interaction,
dealing with failed notification attempts)?
- complex notification (ie per-event customized notification
by affected device/region/service, notification to
customer-selected method based on type and urgency of
notice)
- customer-friendly subscription management (including
multiple notification methods) and notification
archiving
- notification SLA's (ie re-sending multiple timed notices
when required, tracking notifications for auditing, etc)
- efficiently managing multiple conduits for notification
(email, alpha pager, text-to-voice/scripted call center, RSS
feed, Web archives/posting)
- enforcing consistency in notifications (ie form-/
rule-based notification creation and validation,
notification review/authorization prior to distribution)
- handling feedback from notifications (handling customer
responses, tracking viewing and/or reading of notifications,
measuring effectiveness of notifications)
- other important features?
I know that some of these features are built into products
like HPOV. Do they fill the needs of large network
operators? What software do you use to manage customer
notifications?
Thanks.
Pete.
I've used Nagios (formerly NetSaint) in the past and have been very
impressed with it.
http://www.nagios.org/
It of course has a bit of a learing curve but it's not bad at all. Watch
your typos in config files though. I noticed that the parser didn't
detect them well and oddball problems cropped up when made simple mistakes
(like putting a period in the wrong place or fat-fingering a declaration).
Other than that I think it could do all of what you're wanting. I rolled
it out to the admins around the campus on my last job and I received
excellent feedback from them.
Justin
a message of 20 lines which said:
> What software is available/recommended for NOC contact
> management?
I've used Nagios (formerly NetSaint) in the past and have been very
impressed with it.
I used Nagios and I fail to see what's the connection with the
original question? It seems the original poster is looking for
something like RequestTracker <URL:http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/>
instead.
Thus spake Stephane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@gitoyen.net) [22/09/03 08:26]:
> > What software is available/recommended for NOC contact
> > management?
>
> I've used Nagios (formerly NetSaint) in the past and have been very
> impressed with it.
I used Nagios and I fail to see what's the connection with the
original question? It seems the original poster is looking for
something like RequestTracker <URL:http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/>
instead.
Ummm... I'm not sure that RT is what you want, either. Out-of-the-box, RT
is a Ticketing system, not a Contact Management system. Though I realise
that it could probably be hacked to provide such a functionality...
I think between the two of them (Nagios and RT), you would have a chunk of
the requested functionality taken care of. But you still don't have the
Contact Management part, without a little bit of work.
a message of 20 lines which said:
> > What software is available/recommended for NOC contact
> > management?
>
> I've used Nagios (formerly NetSaint) in the past and have been very
> impressed with it.
I used Nagios and I fail to see what's the connection with the
original question? It seems the original poster is looking for
something like RequestTracker <URL:http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/>
instead.
From the original message:
- contact information refresh (regularly verify contact
information via electronic or triggered human interaction,
dealing with failed notification attempts)?
I need more info here such as an example. Verify contact info against
what?
- complex notification (ie per-event customized notification
by affected device/region/service, notification to
customer-selected method based on type and urgency of
notice)
Nagios
- customer-friendly subscription management (including
multiple notification methods) and notification
archiving
Nagios
- notification SLA's (ie re-sending multiple timed notices
when required, tracking notifications for auditing, etc)
Nagios
- efficiently managing multiple conduits for notification
(email, alpha pager, text-to-voice/scripted call center, RSS
feed, Web archives/posting)
Nagios
- enforcing consistency in notifications (ie form-/
rule-based notification creation and validation,
notification review/authorization prior to distribution)
I don't know of a way to review/authorize notifications before going out
but it wouldn't exactly be hard to script and use with Nagios.
- handling feedback from notifications (handling customer
responses, tracking viewing and/or reading of notifications,
measuring effectiveness of notifications)
Nagios doesn't do this. It can accept comments from admins responsible
for a given system/service but that's it that I'm aware of. Tracking
feedback sounds more like a ticketing system to me.
- other important features?
Nagios has numerous useful features. One of the most useful features is
failure notification esculation. 'An email about an outage sent to the
sysadm responsible for the mail system go unanswered (ie the problem still
exists and hasn't been acknowledged)? Esculate it. Page the on-call
pager and let whoever is on-call call the responsible admin on the
telephone.' Very handy feature.
IMHO I think Nagios fits most of the specifications the requesting person
wants.
Justin