This paper describes Trinity, a mediation tool we created to solve a specific problem within a practical domain. The domain is the management of IT service availability in large enterprises. By "enterprise" we mean the set of resources and their interrelationships that make up an organization's distributed computing environment, and that deliver automation services to that organization. Owing to the complexity of enterprises, and the many different domains of operational expertise needed to deliver services, problems arising from service disruptions commonly demand the collaboration of multiple players. The problem is how to share information about service disruptions and their impacts when this information changes its appearance dramatically for different communities.
The mediation tool is interactive, multi-user, and text-based. At its core, the tool comprises a model, or framework of resources and services that is animated by events. Mechanisms of data filtration, translation, and evaluation organize information for different observers' needs. The model's processing organizes events into episodes, which form the basis of multiple viewpoints.
Trinity's architecture consists of an active memory-database, a set of data acquisition agents that run distributed and in parallel, and a set of presentation applications. The "database" embodies the data model of the resources of a computing environment and their interrelationships. Trinity builds its model by auto-discovering the resources and their interrelations. It then animates the model by listening for changes in the real world and allowing the model to change sympathetically. The model both echoes and predicts changes within the overall system. It presents its results both in real time and as historical reports.
Trinity's presentation of the model of the enterprise delivers information about the enterprise appropriately to multiple audiences. Trinity can display the IT consumables both as whole things, and in terms of the nested layers of components that make them up, depending on who is interested in seeing the display and in what context.
Trinity helps reconcile the differences in perspective brought about by different worldviews. The complexity of the environment is so great that it is beyond the grasp of any individual to understand. Rather, there is a community of knowledge about its workings; knowledge is distributed among a number of individuals through a number of subgroups. Each subgroup within that community focuses appropriately on a specialized area of expertise, and interprets the world in those terms. So, for example, the administrator’s broken NIC is the financial analyst's inability to perform a calculation. Trinity provides the common ground where the broken NIC and the inability to calculate are seen as consequences of one and the same issue.
About the speaker:David Zager, Ph.D., Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Avesta Technologies, Inc.
David Zager has been with Avesta Technologies Inc., since shortly after its founding in December 1996. As CTO, Chief Architect and Head of Research, his responsibilities span: technology strategy, product architecture, research, and care and feeding of Avesta's intellectual properties.
Prior to joining Avesta, David spent thirteen years with Morgan Stanley and Co., Inc., where he was a Vice President and served as chief architect of TAPS++, a distributed global business object model. He worked also as a scenario strategic planner concentrating on the impact of global economic and social changes on technology and the financial services industry. David spent most of his time at Morgan Stanley as chief architect, lead developer and manager of a research and development group that created cross-platform data infrastructure and middleware services.
Before his work in software architecture, Dr. Zager was a postdoctoral fellow in Cognitive Science at the University of Chicago and taught Linguistics at SUNY at Stony Brook. In the late Triassic period (early 1980's), he worked as a card filer in Green Library at Stanford University.
Contact information: David Zager