Database Reference
In-Depth Information
How to do it...
The key to successfully identifying what needs to be reported is a clear understanding of
what you or the report requestor is trying to measure and why.
Reporting is driven by a number of organizational needs, which may fall into one or more
of these sample categories:
• Information to support a business case
• Audit and compliance driven request
• Budget planning and forecasting
• Current operational service level
These categories are examples of the business needs which you must understand. Under-
standing the business needs of the report increases the value of the report. For example, let
us expand on and map the preceding business scenarios to the System Center Product using
the following table:
Business/organizational
objective
Objective details
System Center Product
Information to support a
business case
Provide a count of computers out of warranty to justify the request to buy
additional computers.
System Center Configuration Man-
ager
• System Center Config-
uration Manager
• System Center Opera-
tions Manager
• Provide the security compliance state of all windows servers.
• Provide a list of attempted security breaches by month.
Audit and compliance driv-
en request
Budget planning and fore-
casting
How much storage should we plan to invest in next year's budget based on
the last 3 years' usage data?
System Center Operations Manager
Operational Service Level How many incidents were resolved without second tier escalation?
System Center Service Manager
In a majority of cases for System Center administrators, the requestor does not provide the
business objective. Use the preceding table as an example to guide your understanding of a
report request.
