The full version of this article was co-developed with CA communications
For years manufacturing has relied upon a central document called a Bill of Material, which describes, in minute detail, each component of the product. It serves as the foundation for design, procurement, manufacturing and distribution, and therefore as the foundation for companywide planning, costing and communication. The Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is developing into a similarly foundational repository for IT, describing the configuration items (CIs) comprising each IT service as well as their interrelationships. The CMDB helps IT organizations develop new services more easily, provide current services more efficiently and promptly correct any errors that may occur.
CMDB as the foundation
Service management is a discipline based on the ITIL philosophy. Using a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) service management can provide an integrated view of IT services and facilitate the required cost control. This is crucial as in today’s information based society IT cost becomes an ever more significant part of the total cost. And stringent rationalization and automation as part of industrialized service provisioning can reduce IT costs by at least 10% to 15% annually, contributing significantly to a company’s competitiveness.
Fixing problems faster
The CMDB makes it also easier to find, correct and even prevent errors, because staff can immediately see which IT services will be affected when an IT resource goes down. Moreover, the CMDB reveals which business processes are impacted by an interruption in a given IT service. This helps staff set the right priorities during troubleshooting.
Implementing changes safely
Even today the majority of service outages occur as the undesired and unexpected result of introduced changes. This often results in a common attitude of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. A CMDB enables evaluating the impact of changes before they are made and as a result enables a proactive continual improvement attitude.
Providing new IT services faster
Better IT service availability and performance are not the only economic benefits of a CMDB. Just as industrial designers, manufacturing engineers and sales personnel can develop new products based on existing Bill of Materials, management, departments, software engineers and IT teams can customize existing IT services to meet new demands or derive new IT services from existing ones based on CMDB information.
Providing existing IT services easier
The CMDB also simplifies the process of establishing and provisioning a front-end service catalog for users in order to show them which services are available, what they cost (depending on the requested service qualities such as response times) and how quickly they can be available. If the CMDB is the Bill of Material of the IT factory, then the service catalog is its online store.
The IT factory can now follow the laws of economics more closely. IT experts become the production planners and finance engineers of the IT factory. They become partners with management and other departments in the delivery and continuous optimization of business services.
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Friday, December 19, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
IT services at the push of a button—simple to consume but hard to deliver?
The full version of this article was co-developed with CA communications
In modern companies, IT and business processes are practically inseparable. A business transaction such as a an online banking transaction or making a mobile phone call are business services provided almost entirely through IT services. But also insurance companies, hospitals and government organizations have completely automated certain business processes, with increasingly serious consequences for IT.
As a result companies have a continuing obligation to ensure that IT expenditures and risk, don’t make their business services prohibitively expensive or unreliable. Service management, which has been promoted in the IT industry since the 1980s—primarily through the standards of ITIL, offers a possible way out. Unfortunately, the various tools developed by the IT industry to implement ITIL standards for service management are insufficient. Today’s companies have no use for tools that support individual ITIL disciplines such as service support or service level management. Instead they need an integrated approach to service management that manages business services, keeps track of the cost of these services and provides complete, uniform support.
This includes automating and warranting supply from the “IT factory” as well as advanced support functions such as support automation for a seamless user experience, knowledge management for easy access to know answers and corrective actions and a service desk for uniform collecting and reporting of information. Other key components are portfolio view of the offered services, a catalog to give users easy access to the available services, integrated IT asset management, IT governance, and complete change and release management.
Integration is key
Ideally the heart of such a suite is a Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which serves as a central repository for all IT assets, users, roles, rights and authorizations. For the most part, the CMDB is the main source of information for populating the service catalog to describe the available services in detail, explain what constitute these services from the functional perspective. It can also indicate who can access them and how much they cost.
Automation is growing in importanceThe automation of service operation and support requires that the service management suite can manage and control the corresponding functions in the IT factory, and that it do so by closely working with modern data center automation tools and with traditional system and network management systems.
Today’s requirements ask for a suite concept similar to the idea of Office and ERP suites, simplifying the expansion of functionalities as well as the implementation of the best practices and allows for continually improving processes. All this becomes possible when solutions suites allow for uniform usage, simplified licensing and take a departure from the typical heterogenous patchwork solutions of the past.
Download the full version of this article.
In modern companies, IT and business processes are practically inseparable. A business transaction such as a an online banking transaction or making a mobile phone call are business services provided almost entirely through IT services. But also insurance companies, hospitals and government organizations have completely automated certain business processes, with increasingly serious consequences for IT.
As a result companies have a continuing obligation to ensure that IT expenditures and risk, don’t make their business services prohibitively expensive or unreliable. Service management, which has been promoted in the IT industry since the 1980s—primarily through the standards of ITIL, offers a possible way out. Unfortunately, the various tools developed by the IT industry to implement ITIL standards for service management are insufficient. Today’s companies have no use for tools that support individual ITIL disciplines such as service support or service level management. Instead they need an integrated approach to service management that manages business services, keeps track of the cost of these services and provides complete, uniform support.
This includes automating and warranting supply from the “IT factory” as well as advanced support functions such as support automation for a seamless user experience, knowledge management for easy access to know answers and corrective actions and a service desk for uniform collecting and reporting of information. Other key components are portfolio view of the offered services, a catalog to give users easy access to the available services, integrated IT asset management, IT governance, and complete change and release management.
Integration is key
Ideally the heart of such a suite is a Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which serves as a central repository for all IT assets, users, roles, rights and authorizations. For the most part, the CMDB is the main source of information for populating the service catalog to describe the available services in detail, explain what constitute these services from the functional perspective. It can also indicate who can access them and how much they cost.
Automation is growing in importanceThe automation of service operation and support requires that the service management suite can manage and control the corresponding functions in the IT factory, and that it do so by closely working with modern data center automation tools and with traditional system and network management systems.
Today’s requirements ask for a suite concept similar to the idea of Office and ERP suites, simplifying the expansion of functionalities as well as the implementation of the best practices and allows for continually improving processes. All this becomes possible when solutions suites allow for uniform usage, simplified licensing and take a departure from the typical heterogenous patchwork solutions of the past.
Download the full version of this article.
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