Omey Communications

About Omey Communications

Welcome to Omey Communications. Omey is an Irish software development and consultancy company dedicated to excellence in automated management solutions. Our goal is to help our customers move up the value chain. We aim to provide content and solutions that make life easier for our customers. This is the basis for our three main areas of operation:

The following sections describe these areas in more detail.

Products

Each time you use a computer or other electronic device you are managing some item of technology. This principle applies to: sending email, deleting files, running application software, and so on. The operations that apply in these cases are management actions upon managed objects. So, if you have an email message in your inbox, then that message is a managed object. For this object, you have the following possible management actions: read, forward, or delete. The email application presents these actions as menu items or buttons, but the overall effect is the same. You manage the underlying entity: the email message. The same applies for all other managed objects: the object is created and presents a set of management actions. This is illustrated in Figure 1 with a PC and the entities of which it is composed.

Figure 1 A device and its constituent managed objects

On a broader note, an entire operating system is also a managed object - albeit a complex one! The same is true of telecom devices, such as, routers, switches, bridges, etc. Managing these complex entities remains one of the big challenges in modern computing.

Most of us aren't accustomed to thinking about IT in this way. Instead, we focus on getting our work done using the technology as a tool. This simple approach works fine until problems, such as downtime, arise. What about the cost of downtime to your business?

How about when a number of devices are put together? Figure 2 illustrates a simplified view of a modern enterprise network. All the entities in Figure 2 consist of many managed objects; this is true both individually and collectively. In other words, the entities interact with each other to produce another level of complexity. The stress point in Figure 1 indicates a critical point of weakness in the network. Can this stress point be monitored in real time without deploying expensive instrumentation? With Omey's Element View it can be monitored without having to pay a large price.

Figure 2 A simplified network

IT and networking have in a way become victims of their own success: the growing problem affecting IT and network management is complexity. The deployed technology is just too complex for manual management - 40% of all system downtime is now attributed to operator error. Such errors are not due to a lack of training, they merely reflect the difficult decisions that must be made on an ongoing basis by technology administrators. It's easy to get these decisions wrong.

Omey's vision is that with the appropriate automated management software, you can reduce the cost of managing ever-more complex technology.

Management problems cost money

Whenever you have a machine on your network with a problem, it costs you money because someone has to carry out the following:

If the problem persists, then the cycle has to repeat possibly involving other people. This represents an escalating cost that takes you away from other more profitable work.

The slow failure problem

We live in an era where online automated software updates are regular occurrences, e.g., antivirus software updates, Windows updates, new versions of applications, etc. More than ever, software is changing as updates are automatically applied. Such updates represent a specialised form of automated management called configuration management. They are not without risk.

Imagine you install some software (or accept a software update) on a machine and that software has a bug. Bugs are a fact of life with pretty much all software! However, in this case the bug causes the machine to gradually slow down or to use excessive resources. The only manifestation of the problem is a reduction in performance. The problem may render the machine unusable or severly impact the services it offers to other users.

Very often, IT administrators tackle this type of problem using ad hoc measures, such as, running anitvirus tools, stopping and rstarting services, or simply restarting the machine. Clearly, this isn't a solution because the problem is mostl likely just going to recur.

Instead of ad hoc measures, what is needed is a means of reliably looking into the affected machine, drawing out some key data, and making some meaningful observations. This improves the chances of an informed decision by the person assigned to the problem. Unfortunately, software tools to facilitate this more structured approach tend to be expensive and often unreliable.

Clearly, better products and processes are needed for tackling the management problem. Here at Omey Communications, we are engaged in this challenge and we have 3 main areas of focus:

Software products for IT and network management

Element View is Omey's first software product - initially aimed at managing networks of machines running Microsoft Windows. The key idea of Element View is to assist IT managers in running their networks and helping to solve problems such as the ones described above. Using Element View, IT managers can view the following details:

Apart from allowing over-pressed IT administrators to look far more deeply into their networks, Element View differs from the competition in a few key ways:

The following is a brief look at Element View.

Element View

Element View is simple and powerful. It consists of 2 main parts: a manager and managed machines. The manager is a single application that runs on one machine. An authorized IT administrator can access the manager application to view the details described above. What about the managed machines?

Managed machines run a small agent program that handles manager requests, data collection, storage, and transmission to the manager. The agent is the key to gathering information about the managed machines. It is this information that can help the IT administrator to look into the managed machines and make more informed decisions.

Once installed, the agent software operates with practically no user input. The user has to do very little to gain rapid access to key management data such as:

Using Element View, it doesn't matter if a managed machine is in a geographically remote location. Once a machine has an agent running on it, then that machine can be managed. This applies also to machines deployed in hazardous locations or other situations where access is a problem.

Element View: a platform for growth

Element View version 1.0 manages networks of Windows machines - both servers and desktops. Version 2.0 will extend this coverage to include management of Linux machines. Version 3.0 will manage telecom devices (routers, hubs, etc.).

We are happy to consider partner and end user requests for changes to Element View. If you provide us with feedback on your use of Element View, we will consider adding new features to suit your needs.

Consultancy services

We also offer a vendor-independent consultancy service.

Please contact us for rates and proposals.

Articles and white papers

Books

Contact us

Please feel free to contact us at: mailto:omeycomms@eircom.net?subject=Enquiry