Information systems administration

Businesses increasingly rely on complex networked systems. This exposes them to breakdowns, drops in performance and other operational problems. To control this exposure, they are spending an increasing proportion of the information system budget. There is a clear need for technologies that can reduce this exposure to operational problems and the costs of interconnected systems. Current management systems focus on collecting operational data from all these networked devices, and presenting this data to operating staff in a super-control center. This centralized approach has its limits when it comes to very large installations (problems of throughput and volume of information to be visualized) and highly complex networks. In the last paragraph, we'll look at research into server self-administration.