A few statistics for year 2004:
- the number of Webmail users surpassed POP users by 60%;
- on average over 8,000 CPU hours of users' jobs were processed on the HPC server "Orpin" each month, representing 73% utilization of the available capacity;
- usage of computer laboratories in March and November alone represents 30% of the utilization for the whole year.
These statistics, produced by the in-house developed Computer Resource Usage and Performance Statistics System, provides useful information for the planning and deployment of ITSC's services.
"Being an IT service provider serving tens of thousands of users, our colleagues are always keen to know how the services are being used. They need a tool to evaluate the current usage of IT services and anticipate the future demand," says Jimmy Cheung from the Internal Applications Team, who provides back-end support for colleagues engaged in user services.
The Statistics System provides a basis for resource planning and work scheduling. "For example, the increasing popularity of Webmail indicates a change in users' habit, which can be taken into consideration in future resource allocation and hardware upgrades." says Lydia Mak, co-author of the Computer Resource Usage and Performance Statistics System.
"Our colleagues also rely on the statistics report to decide whether we should continue to subscribe a particular software," adds Jimmy. "If the software's usage drops to a very low level, money could better be saved for other uses."
Like many other systems developed by the Internal Applications Team, the keys to successful system implementation revolves around thorough planning and adequate communication. "No one knows more than the end users of the system what they want," explains Lydia. "All we have to do in the first place is to listen to and understand their requirements clearly, keeping in mind that our goal is to design a system that can help them." From Lydia's experience, it's important, as well, to put oneself in users' shoes to look for an optimized solution that meets users' requirements.
Programming work follows the system requirement definition. "We obtain raw data from a number of back-end systems operating on various platforms. These data are converted to standardized formats and presented in a way that is easy to navigate, so that with just a few clicks, statistics of service usage and performance are readily available," says Jimmy. "That's what our colleagues on the front-lines are looking for."
It's such a seamless cooperation between the front-lines and back-office personnel that contributes to ITSC's well-informed resource planning and priority setting.
