Availability Management

Definition - What does Availability Management mean?

Availability management refers to the process of organizing IT assets in a manner that ensures continued access to those assets by all the people who require them. In practice, availability management is the art of meeting a company's needs in a cost-effective way. This involves managing users' expectations almost as much as the technology.

Techopedia explains Availability Management

In an ideal world, all users would have immediate access to IT assets regardless of how many users were attempting to access them. This is rarely the case, however, so availability management attempts to make the best use of an organization's assets. Availability management usually focuses on maintaining access for users/systems whose work is considered critical to the business and then looks at providing “good enough” access to less critical users and systems.

Availability management is made up of several steps, including:
  • Analyzing and defining IT requirements
  • Planning and implementing procedures to improve IT infrastructure and resource sharing
  • Measuring the results, such as wait times following requests, and making adjustments

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