Calculated business impact values

An administrator uses the weights.conf or weights-conf.xml import datafile to assign weights to business elements and to the infrastructure and application elements that support the business elements. Business Impact Manager uses the assigned weights to calculate a numeric impact value for each root-cause problem notification received by the Global Manager from an underlying Domain Manager. Business Impact Manager calculates the impact value for a problem notification as soon as Business Impact Manager imports the notification from the Global Manager.

To calculate a numeric impact value for a root-cause problem notification, Business Impact Manager performs the following operations:

• Determines the infrastructure or application element denoted in the problem notification.

• Determines the infrastructure or application element denoted in each impact notification associated with the problem notification by tracing the Causes relationship from the problem notification to each of its impact notifications:

  problem notification -> Causes -> impact notification

  impact notification -> CausedBy -> problem notification

  The underlying Domain Manager that diagnoses the problem and its impacts creates the Causes/CausedBy relationships between the problem notification and its impact notifications.

• Determines the business elements associated with the infrastructure or application element denoted in the problem notification.

• Determines the business elements associated with each infrastructure or application element denoted in the impact notifications associated with the problem notification.

• Reads the weights assigned to the impacted business, infrastructure, and application elements and adds the weights together to calculate the impact value for the problem notification.

  After calculating the business impact value of a root-cause problem notification, Business Impact Manager assigns that value to the Impact attribute of the notification. When viewing the problem notification in the Notification Log Console of the Global Manager, the business impact value appears in the Impact column.

  Business impact values quantify the business impact of the root-cause problems; the larger the impact value, the larger the business impact (degree of impairment). Administrators can use business impact values to sort problem notifications by the impact that they have on service delivery.