Manage IT - Event Management

Events in the IT world are mostly alerts triggered by the systems and can be considered as early warning signs. Event Management is needed in an organization for early detection of IT events that occur in different phases of the service environment. The difference between an event and an incident is that events are more proactive in nature whereas incidents management is reactive. Tickets that are raised as a result of an event would get classified mostly as service requests since there is no degradation in service yet. Managing events helps to take a proactive decision and prevents an event from occurring. As per ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), events are of 3 types based on their significance:

1. Informational Event
2. Exceptional Event
3. Unusual Event

Informational Event: Have your missed out an opportunity to attend an important meeting or seminar, only because you were not reminded about it? Informational events are something similar. Such events could be about reminders about tasks, patch management upgrades etc. These events help you streamline activities and can help you in your day-to-day life as well. The gadget seminar could have been attended if a simple reminder could have been set up in your phone.

Exceptional Event: Given a scenario that you were reminded about the gadget seminar and you drive yourself to the place. There is always a process that you need to follow before moving in your car. For example, adjusting the mirrors, checking the dashboard etc. When fuel is low the needle points to "E" indicating an empty tank. In this case the fuel indicated to you is the exception and thus falls under the category of an Exceptional Event. So refer it back to an IT scenario, this could be about storage space nearing threshold limit or licenses about to expire which need to be renewed etc. These are events which would not occur daily but the IT team would not be surprised when they receive such an alert.

Unusual Event: Given the same scenario as above when the car does not start, you experience reduced performance etc is an Unusual Event. In an IT setup, this could relate to alerts being received about virus attacks on the network. Such events would not happen in the day to day operations of the IT setup.

IT is important to know difference between an unusual event and an exceptional event. Exceptional events typically would happen although not on a daily basis whereas unusual events would in most cases indicate that there is something definitely amiss within the IT organization

A good even management can help the IT organization process

• In proactive decision making leading to reduced incidents and business outages
• In obtaining operational information, exceptions and unusual behaviours which can lead to better planning for the future

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About Author:

Dimpy Thurakhia is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at dimpy.t@spluspl.com