Event relationship networks: A framework for action oriented analysis in event management

Abstract

Event management is a corner stone of high quality service delivery. To date, the focus of event management has been root cause analysis (RCA). We believe that this focus is misdirected in that it does not consider what action to take. Indeed, the root cause may not be actionable, and actions may be required for factors that are unrelated to a root cause (e.g., a condition that signals the end of a problem). We propose a new framework for event management-action oriented analysis (AOA). AOA assigns roles to events so as to determine the actions to take if an event is received. In many cases, the same event can have different roles depending on the context. These ambiguities are resolved by analyzing event relationship networks. AOA also addresses what information is needed from event sources and subject matter experts. This information is identified and extracted by a set of four activities that we refer to as event management design. AOA has been used with much success at IBM's ISM installation and over fifty other production sites.