Workflow Management Reduces Administrative Costs while Enhancing Network Governance

• Supports ‘controlled delegation’ of change management responsibilities to distribute administrative workloads – delegate with authority;
• Aligns administrative tasks with the appropriate network management resources;
• Hierarchical structure ensures proper controls and safeguards are maintained;
• Tracks all configuration changes in Proteus’ audit trail.

Market Drivers

Organizations looking to lower IT expenses want to ensure network administrators are assigned to tasks commensurate with their skill sets and pay grades. They do not want senior staff spending undue effort on mundane or repetitive change management tasks that could easily be handled by junior administrators or even the user community. Best practices in network governance dictate that there be strict controls and oversight on network configuration changes however. It is inappropriate to give any one individual, particularly a junior network administrator, unfettered access to configuration utilities. Organizations must then strike a balance between the economic benefits of delegating administrative duties to junior staff, with the requirements for proper oversight and control.

Proteus Workflow Management

Proteus’ workflow management features balance these seemingly competing requirements. Workflow features allow senior network administrators to assign access rights to local administrators who are then permitted to make changes to the network infrastructure within the boundaries of their privileges. Privileges can be assigned system wide or on an object level basis.

Workflow management empowers local administrators while reducing demands on more experienced senior staff. Extending restricted administrative rights to less experienced administrators, frees senior staff to address more pressing issues, requiring their specialized skills. Proteus ensures proper controls are maintained by providing senior administrators with visibility to – and veto control over – changes initiated by junior staff.

Change Control and Oversight in Practice

Proteus’ granular approach to workflow management allows for individual or group administrative access rights on a hierarchical basis, that establish who can make changes, what objects can they change, who can approve such changes, and when such changes can take effect. Proteus controls delegation of change management as follows:

1. A network administrator utilizes access controls to delegate change management to a specific user or user group. The administrator specifies that changes must follow the workflow management model.
2. In accordance with the workflow model, a user makes a required change to IPAM data in a sandbox environment. Each such change generates a ‘request’ to the administrator to approve or reject the change.
3. Change requests are actionable by administrators who have full control over the affected objects. Changes requests are also visible to other administrators and users.
4. When an administrator approves the change, all updates are realized and the system indicates that it was the approving administrator who issued the updates. Alternatively, if an administrator rejects the change, it will be discarded and any other associated changes will be suspended.
5. Proteus’ audit logs are updated accordingly.