Calculating desktop Availability

[martin_d]

Can anyone help please? Currently I only report on desktop fix SLA, but have been requested to look at calculating the overall availability for desktops across a large estate. Can anyone help with how I would do this?

Thanks

[Diarmid]

This sounds tricky. I'll try some thinking out loud.

The availability of desktops through out the estate - that must mean how many are broken at any one time. Or it must mean the number of staff who do not have access to a desktop at any one time.

So that's the first problem. In many cases when a PC is broken, its usual user can get at some or all of their requirements by using another machine (either an absent colleague's or a "spare").

Next, many desktop problems only render some facilities (services) unavaialble. In theory you could measure these as a certain percentage unavailable, but I would think the complexity of any formula for doing this would be beyond practical use. Is it number of facilities, weighted by utilization (normal or as required at this moment), and/or weighted by value of these facilities to the business?

I think it might be easier to revisit the question and instead of asking about desktop availability, come up with some valuable question like 'for how long are individual staff unable to perform their work, are forced to less valuable work, due to failures on their desktop system.

Of course with networked services you also need to be clear whether it was the desktop at the heart of the issue or some other factor in the network configuration. If a network patch to a desktop goes awry, is that a desktop issue?

Just a few thoughts, no answers. Don't know if it helps.
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