symian

SYMIAN

Symian is a tool, based on what-if scenario analysis and discrete-event simulation, for the modeling of a hierarchical and multi-level incident management structures. The simulative approach allows to extract important metrics and statistics in complex and dynamic systems, which would otherwise be impossible to obtain by means of the analytical approach. Symian allows to test corrective actions on the architecture itself of support groups before executing them in practice.

References

Symian (more precisely an earlier version of it) was used in the following research papers:

1. C. Bartolini, C.Stefanelli, M. Tortonesi, "SYMIAN: Analysis and Performance Improvement of the IT Incident Management Process", IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, IEEE Communications Society Press, ISSN 1932-4537, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 132-144, September 2010.
2. C. Bartolini, C. Stefanelli, M. Tortonesi, "SYMIAN: a Simulation Tool for the Optimization of the IT Incident Management Process", in Proceedings of 19th IFIP/IEEE International Workshop on Distributed Systems: Operations and Management (DSOM 2008), pp. 83-94, ISBN: 978-3-540-85999-4, 25-26 September 2008, Pythagorion, Samos Island, Greece.
3. C. Bartolini, C. Stefanelli, M. Tortonesi, "Business-impact analysis and simulation of critical incidents in IT service management", in Proceedings of the 11th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM 2009) - Main track, pp. 9-16, ISBN: 978-1-4244-3486-2, 1-5 June 2009, New York, NY, USA.
4. C. Bartolini, C. Stefanelli, M. Tortonesi, "Modeling IT Support Organizations from Transactional Logs", in Proceedings of the 12th IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2010) - Main track, pp. 256-263, ISBN: 978-1-4244-5367-2, 19-23 April 2010, Osaka, Japan.
5. C. Bartolini, C. Stefanelli, M. Tortonesi, D. Targa, "A Web-based What-If Scenario Analysis Tool for Performance Improvement of IT Support Organizations" (short paper), in Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM 2011), 24-28 October 2011, Paris, France.
6. C. Bartolini, C. Stefanelli, M. Tortonesi, "Modeling IT Support Organizations Using Multiple-Priority Queues", in Proceedings of the 13th IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2012) - Main track, 16-20 April 2012, Maui, Hawaii, USA.
7. C. Bartolini, C. Stefanelli, M. Tortonesi, D. Targa, "A Cloud-based Solution for the Performance Improvement of IT Support Organizations", in Proceedings of the 13th IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2012) - Mini-conference track, 16-20 April 2012, Maui, Hawaii, USA.
8. C. Bartolini, C. Stefanelli, M. Tortonesi, "Potential Benefits and Challenges of Closed-Loop Optimization Processes for IT Support Organizations", in Proceedings of the 7th IFIP/IEEE International Workshop on Business-driven IT Management (BDIM 2012), 20 April 2012, Maui, Hawaii, USA.
9. C. Bartolini, C. Stefanelli, M. Tortonesi, "Synthetic Incident Generation in the Reenactment of IT Support Organization Behavior", in Proceedings of the 13th IFIP/IEEE Integrated Network Management Symposium (IM 2013) - Technical (main) track, 27-31 May 2013, Ghent, Belgium.

Please, consider citing some of these papers if you find Symian useful for your research.

NOTE

I am still in the process of cleaning up the Symian code. As soon as I am done, I will commit it here and upload updated installation and usage information.