Managing information overload on large enterprise systems

Managers and operators of modern enterprise IT environments are faced with the daunting task of monitoring hundreds of thousands of interconnected elements, from individual hardware components and virtualized applications, to logical business services. Research results [1] and anecdotal evidence from network administrators indicate that common visualization techniques used to represent networks do not scale well for large dynamic environments and viewers can suffer from information overload. We interviewed managers and operators of an enterprise IT environment regarding the challenges they face when dealing with large and complex systems, how they manage to work around those problems and how well visualization tools support their workflow. Our results show the strategies used by participants to limit the effects of information overload and apply them in the design a new visualization metaphor for navigation on complex environments.