Henrik,
I am so sorry to hear about your situation. I hope sanity will reign in the end. Here are some of my suggestions:
Don't immediately turn the issue into a technical battle of TNG vs. Hobbit. If you have the time, read "Getting to Yes" a book on negotiations. Start with identifying what "monitoring" is supposed to do in PHB-speak: maximize service availability to customers, provide technicians the ability to quickly diagnose problems, ensure the functionality of the environment after changes. The point being, try to establish the goals everyone can agree on. You will lose the PHB vs. technician fight based solely on "features."
Be prepared to accept using both tools is fine. Even recommend it, especially if the organization is prepared to do "cost-benefit" analysis for the effort with NPV or ROI. Practically speaking, running both tools together would be much better than just TNG.
Ask about the process to get hobbit on the "approved software" list. If your company has IT Governance, they might be a good spot to start.
Anticipate the issues the PHB will "throw at you." Sure hobbit is great, but what if you leave Henrik? No one else in the company/world knows hobbit like you, that creates risk to the organization. Big tools are "certified" for security, hobbit is a "bunch of people in their basements." Craft the replies in business and financial terms that are quantifiable. Yes, I am the author of hobbit, with a development and user community of over X,XXX. The code is written in C, a standard for all Computer Science programs, with XXX,XXX programmers in the world.
That's all for now. For the sake of the entire hobbit community, good luck!
Scott
On 2/7/07, Kauffman, Tom <KauffmanT at nibco.com> wrote:
Back when we had an IBM mainframe, CA was desperately trying to find ways to "give" us Unicenter, until our VP told them that he'd drop them as an accepted vendor if he saw another proposal in the next six months.
So -- we never did Unicenter.
We did BMC Patrol on AIX -- and never could get viable alerting from the product.
I have yet to see ANY of the vendor-provided tools that work with a lightweight client for viewing the current status. Hobbit lets me check things with any browser, on any OS -- and when you've only got dial-up access to work with, this is *critical*. I don't have the time to load a big honkin' java application (tivoli) or an ugly X-windows app (BMC) over dialup to see what's down.
Big Brother and Hobbit and a handfull of home-brew scripts dropped BMC out of our shop and saved us over $40,000 per YEAR in licensing.
Tom Kauffman NIBCO, Inc
-----Original Message----- From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:henrik at hswn.dk] Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2007 4:15 AM To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: [hobbit] Hobbit versus Unicenter/TNG
I'm currently arguing with some PHB's who insist that Unicenter/TNG is the "standard" monitoring tool and we're supposed to use that exclusively.
Since I have the users on my side I do expect to win that struggle, but if any of you have compared Hobbit with Unicenter/TNG I would be interested to hear about it. Especially features you've found that Hobbit has, but TNG doesn't. I know of quite a few, but any ammunition is welcome.
If you prefer, contact me directly instead of through the list.
Regards, Henrik
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