Two heads are better than one

The traditional method for diagnosing complicated issues is to use event correlation (see this Wikipedia article). Event correlation can be a powerful tool, but it has some significant limitations. Because of the relative expense, event correlation systems typically focus on high-profile issues like security break-ins and outages in high-availability networks. This is unfortunate, because many simple but pervasive support issues can be addressed much more easily using information from multiple devices. Device HealthCare takes the whole process to the next level by using direct communication between local support engines. We call this Cooperative Support. 

With Cooperative Support, DARTs have a convenient facility for accessing the engine on other devices to help diagnose and resolve issues.

• Not just an incremental improvement
• A truly new way of doing things
• DART has convenient facility for accessing engine on other devices
• Every engine interface specifies where engine primitive should run
• DARTs can query device presence and availability
• Transparently implemented for DART designer

Using this mechanism, it is quite simple for a DART designer to access information from other devices and use this to make decisions and take actions that would otherwise be much more difficult without this additional access. This is the true power of Cooperative Support.

Benefit

Cooperative Support is more than just an incremental improvement. It represents a truly new way of doing things. As such, the benefits will play out more and more as time goes by, but even today the power of Cooperative Support brings immediate value to all support organizations.

• Beyond monitoring
  1. Information from multiple vantage points
  2. Issues that affect multiple devices 
• Reducing false positive
  1. Differentiate major failure vs. single device configuration issue

Uniqueness

As described above, event correlation is related to Cooperative Support. But it is very different in many ways. It relies on up-to-date reporting to a central resource, where the analysis must take place. Cooperative Support distributes the process, moving the diagnosis and decision-making process onto the device where the issues are actually happening and all of the relevant information is available. No other offering has anything even faintly resembling Cooperative Support. The concept has been designed into the architecture of Device HealthCare from the beginning, and will therefore not easily be duplicated by adding extensions to some other existing system.

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