Johannesburg, 05 Dec 2016
Around the beginning of 2014, IBM released a new bundle of products and called it Netcool Operations Insight or NOI. You might be curious as to what the differences are between the NOI bundle and the “old” Netcool. There are a few key differences between the ‘old’ Netcool licensing and the Netcool Operations Insight (NOI) bundle. These relate mainly to a new pricing structure and some analytics that has been in included in NOI that is not available in the ‘old’ Netcool.
This blog discusses the main differences and here is a YouTube video that explains some of the differences:
Additional functionality in NOI
The NOI bundle contains log analytics and insights, which is not available in the ‘old’ licensing model. This includes:
- Related events – helps you identify patterns of events, eg, events that always occur together over a period of time, even though they might not have anything else in common;
- Event grouping – which tags events from a common source or location; and
- Seasonality – this identifies regular events, which you can either ignore, for example, when the payroll server spikes at the end of the month, or choose an appropriate course of action to resolve the problem.
Pricing model change
It is worth noting that since about the middle of 2016, the old pricing model is not available to new customers, but only to existing customers who want to expand their implementation.
The pricing for the NOI bundle is based on the number of endpoints that are managed and the number of connections to external systems. The number of endpoints is broken down into three categories:
- Virtual network device
- Virtual server
- Client device
A customer licence quote typically consists of the these items mentioned above, so the quantity of: Connections, virtual network devices, virtual servers and client devices (which come in a 10-pack).
The NOI bundle allows customers to deploy as many ObjectServers, impact instances, probes, WebGUI and DASH instances as they want, as long as there are a sufficient number of licences bought for the endpoints from which events are received and connection licences for target systems like Trouble Ticketing or CMDB systems. This means there can be a production, test and development environment; that all components, including probes, can be deployed in failover; and multiple tiers can be deployed without having to purchase additional licences.
It also includes common reporting at no extra cost, as long as the DB2 database provided is used, otherwise a connection licence must be bought to send data to another database, like Oracle.
There are a few expansions that can be bought for the NOI bundle. These are:
- Network manager and configuration manager (licensed by an additional price per each of the three endpoint types);
- Network performance insights (licensed by an additional price per each of the three endpoint types);
- Alert notification (priced per user needing to be alerted); and
- Runbook automation (single licence for usage).
The pricing of the ‘old’ Netcool is calculated per component deployed. This model is so that there is a licence for:
- Each ObjectServer installed (no discount for dev, test or failover ObjectServers);
- Each probe connected to an element manager (if there is a requirement for probes to be in failover, a second licence must be purchased);
- Each device that is connecting directly to a probe and not via an intermediate system, eg, a router forwarding SNMP traps to an MTTrapd probe;
- Each impact server that connects to a system external to Netcool;
- Each interaction or connection from Impact via a DSA (data source adaptor) to an external system; and
- Each gateway that connects an ObjectServer to an external system. Bidirectional and unidirection gateways are priced differently.
Visualisation through WebGUI and DASH is included in the ObectServer licence.
Reporting through Common Reporter is also included in the ObjectServer licence, as long as the DB2 database provided is used, otherwise a gateway licence must be bought to connect to the external database.
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