[hobbit] Hobbit versus Unicenter/TNG

[Henrik Stoerner]

On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 08:01:08AM -0500, Scott Walters wrote:
> Henrik,
> 
>  I am so sorry to hear about your situation.  I hope sanity will
> reign in the end.  Here are some of my suggestions:

<big snip>

Thanks - I appreciate your comments, and they do match up pretty well
with my own thoughts about how to tackle this.

I'm not particularly worried about it. This issue has been there ever
since we started using BB almost 6 years ago. The only reason why it's
on the agenda now is that I have a new boss who has decided that we 
should get this issue resolved once and for all - he will not accept
that Hobbit has this "second class" status in our NOC.

And yes - this is all about politics. The Unicenter group is also the
group responsible for manning our NOC - and given that it takes about 20
people to run Unicenter here versus 0.5 (me) to run Hobbit, they are
somewhat reluctant to embrace it.

(The 0.5 is only for running Hobbit - developing Hobbit is another
issue, but that happens mostly in my spare time).


> You will lose the PHB vs. technician fight based solely on "features."

The only reason Hobbit exists is that I secured the support of some
fairly high-up people as well as a lot of customer-contact people (and
external customers, even) right from the start. When two of our top-3
customers insist on having access to Hobbit as a requirement for
renewing their contracts, I have a pretty strong case.

When I do use the "feature" argument, I know I have to focus on the
features that bosses understand. There are lots of neat tech stuff
in Hobbit, but that doesn't sell Hobbit - the abundance of graphs
and (SLA) reports do, as well as the positive feedback the boss gets
from our customers.


> *  Be prepared to accept using both tools is fine.

That is what we've been doing so far. I've always insisted that the
thing we can monitor with TNG *will* be monitored by TNG - e.g. we never
put "disk" alerts on the Hobbit critical-systems view, because those are
supposed to be handled by TNG. (Whether TNG actually detects the problem 
then is another matter entirely).


> *  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.

This was/is a major reason for releasing Hobbit as Open Source. I
frequentely point out how many people are downloading Hobbit, and the
amount of traffic on the mailing list to show that it's "not just me in
my basement". The list of companies using Hobbit that was put together
last year is useful. And just a couple of days ago I received a mail
from IBM, where they asked for permission to include some Hobbit
documentation into one of their z/VM guides - this will also be handy to
show that Hobbit is more than just my personal project.

> For the sake of the entire hobbit community, good luck!

Thanks, I'll let you know how it works out.


Regards,
Henrik