Metrics are essential for developing the best virtualization solution for your organization: we’ve all heard the mantra, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”.

But metrics aren’t easy, especially if you are starting with a blank piece of paper and trying to work out what to measure and how to measure it. If you read up on the subject of metrics, you will find some heavy tomes on how to design metrics with a lot of detail that, quite frankly, you don’t have time to work through – and after all, surely someone has done this before?

At VMware we have a unique view across business verticals and sizes of organizations when working with our customers, and every week we hear questions on metrics: What should I measure? How should I measure it? Are my metrics good compared to my competitors?

The proposal document “VMware Super Measures” is the start of a collaboration attempt on the VIOPS Pilot Project to develop some simple, effective and industry-common metrics that help you:

1) Measure your success, or failure, with virtualization. An example might be surpassing, or missing, virtualization targets.

2) Prioritize focus on your efforts. The metrics focus on the business and the customer, not on technical aspects, and this focus is a critical success factor for virtualization

3) Implement metrics as soon as possible. The earlier you start collecting metrics, the more management information at your disposal to make better decisions.

You can collect metrics without acting upon them, even though that would be defeating the point. But if you do anything after reading the Proposal, I would appreciate a comment, a suggestion, your point of view, and if I may dare, some contribution from you to improve the proposal so we can develop it into a practice for the benefit of the whole community.

Thanks

Steve