Computer Desk In Pink
Approach of Information Technology Infrastructure Library in Information Technology
Today, businesses have high expectations towards the quality of services and these expectations change with time. This means that for IT operations to live up to these expectations they need to concentrate on service quality and a more customer oriented approach. Cost issues are now high on the agenda, as is the development of a more business like attitude to provision of service. ITIL focuses on providing high quality services with a particular focus on customer relationships. This means that the IT operations should provide whatever is agreed with customers, which implies a strong relationship between the IT operations and their customers and partners. Tactical processes are centered on the relationships between the IT operations and their customers. Service Delivery is partially concerned with setting up agreements and monitoring the targets within these agreements. Meanwhile, on the operational level, the Service Support processes can be viewed as delivering services as laid down in these agreements.
Introduction
People don't buy products they buy services. "Service is a means of delivering value to customer, by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve and without the ownership of specific costs and risks". People can buy products but if they don't have the process implementation right, no product can help them; it can be a struggle to make sure companies see these issues. IT departments which do not practice Service Management are doomed, this is the prediction made by today's IT Service Management Managers. It is not just a process or procedure that can be implemented easily; companies must act and make sure that the processes are inside the head of the people who are working with it.
Companies can achieve progress by treating customers as customers not as colleagues. If there is a problem companies must understand what that means to your customers and prioritize problems that way. "Don't deliver only an IT solution but deliver a solution that can be worked directly into cost saving for the company". Companies can become even more successful if they help its clients or customers align IT with their businesses.
ABOUT ITIL
ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which is most widely accepted process framework for IT Service Management. ITIL is a set of concepts and practices for Information Technology Service Management (ITSM), Information Technology (IT) development and IT operations.
ITIL is used by organizations worldwide to establish and improve capabilities in service management.
Primarily, ITIL provides international best practice guidance in IT Service Management. However, ITIL offers more than just guidance; it underpins the foundations of ISO/IEC 20000 (Service Management Standard, previously BS15000). It also provides a framework for IT Service Management Practitioners to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of ITIL and to develop their professional expertise through training and qualifications.
Mark Hamilton, an IT management consultant at Pink Elephant, described the ITIL framework as "a set of options that I can use in the IT space to make myself more efficient and effective." It's all about "process, activities and options, " according to Hamilton.
History of ITIL
The ITIL concept emerged in the 1980s, when British government determined that the level of IT service quality provided to them was not sufficient. The Central computer and Telecommunication Agency (CCTA), now called the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), was tasked with developing a framework for efficient and financially responsible use of IT resources within the British Government and the private sector.
ITIL V1 focused on various processes for managing IT systems
In 2001, version 2 of ITIL was released. The Service Support and Service Delivery books were redeveloped into more concise usable volumes.
In 2007, version 3 of ITIL was published. This adopted more of a lifecycle approach to service management, with greater emphasis on IT business integration.
Why Service Management for IT
IT is becoming increasingly crucial for business
Downtime on IT causes huge business losses
- System Admin was shot at share broking firm
- Users rushed to branches when ATM was unable to dispense cash
Organizations want to move towards ZDT (Zero Down Time) for crucial services
Most of the businesses are going e-way
Implementation of ITIL can help companies in aligning its clients or customer with their businesses. Let's see what we mean by ITIL here:
Challenges faced in IT-
- Improper input from business to IT
- Expectation mismatch
- Changing business and technology needs
- Repetitive issues create operational bottlenecks
- Difficulties in moving towards High Availability
- Sudden rise in user base leading to performance issues
- Users are unaware of technology- Training needs.
Hence ITIL service Management focuses on business value as its prime objective.
The core set consists of five publications-
Service strategy - SS volume provides guidance on how to design, develop and implement service management not only as an organizational capability but also as a strategic asset.
The goal is to help service provider to operate and grow successfully in the long term.
Service design - SD provides guidance for the design and development of service's and service management processes. The objective is to satisfy business objectives based on the quality, compliance, risk and security requirements. Its business values is to reduce TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
Service transition - ST volume provides guidance for the development and improvement of capabilities for transitioning new and changed services into operations.
Service operation - It includes guidance on achieving effectiveness and efficiency in the delivery and support of services so as to ensure value for customer and the service provider.
Continual service improvement - CSI provides the instrumental guidance in creating and maintaining value for customer through better design, introduction and the operation of services.
Guidance is provided for linking improvement efforts and outcomes with service strategy, design and transition; a closed loop feedback system based on the Plan-Do-Check-Act model.
Improvements in IT Services can be brought through the following processes:
| PROCESS | PURPOSE | BENEFITS |
| Configuration Management | To manage large and complex IT services and infrastructures. It enables people to make decision at the right time and also minimizes numbers of quality and compliance issues. | Following the implementation of Configuration Management, the service desk has much greater insight into the relationships between the users; the three people assigned to incident matching can be reduced to two. |
| Incident Management | Its objective is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimize the adverse impact on business operations. | Resulted in decrease in downtime per user. This is defined as the amount of time a user is on a phone to the service desk or cannot work because of a failure. It the downtime per user is reduced by one minute per person per day. |
| Problem Management | Main objective is to reduce the number and impact of incidents over time by finding the root cause. It maintains the information about problems and workarounds. Known Error database is created by problem management. | The implementation of problem management decreases the number of recurring incidents. |
| Change Management | Ensures that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes. | Two changes are implemented simultaneously resulting in a major problem. The customer support system fails, resulting in loss of 50 customers with an average purchasing power of $500, resulted into loss of potential revenue. Hence only authorized changes are allowed with change management process in place. |
| Service Level Management | Ensures that an agreed level of IT Service is provided for all current IT Services. | Due to a clear set of agreements, the service desk is less troubled with calls that are not a part of service offered. Thus, In this way the service desk employees can handle more users, resulting in increased revenue. |
| Availability Management | Ensure high availability of services. | Due to a physical error on a hard disk, a server supporting 100 people crashes. It takes 3 hours to have a new disk delivered and installed before starting up the system again. On a critical system, Availability Management processes would have highlighted the need for a mirror disk which could automatically take over. |
| Capacity Management | Ensure the optimal and cost effective provision for IT. | There is an overcapacity of 20%. Assuming your IT infrastructure costs you $5 million, you could gain up to $1 million by implementing capacity management and frequently reassessing the necessary capacity or selling the extra capacity. |
| IT Service Continuity Management | Ensure quick recovery after a disaster. | A water pipe breaks, flooding the server room. It takes 2 days to be operational. The average user has missed 10 hours of work. Hence the (BCP) business continuity plan makes sure no loss of service. |
Recently, some companies have made public the benefits they have realized by implementing ITIL best practices for IT Service Management:
Proctor & Gamble - Started using ITIL 3 years ago and has seen a 6-8% cut in operating costs. Another ITIL project has reduced help desk calls by 10%.
Ontario Justice Enterprise - Embraced ITIL two & a half years ago and created a virtual help/service desk that cut support costs by 40%.
Caterpillar - Started ITIL projects 18 month ago. After applying ITIL principles, the rate of reaching the target response time for incident management on web related services jumped from 60% to more that 90%. (Source - Melissa Shaw, Network World Management Strategies News tellers)
Overall Benefits:
1. Supports reducing IT costs and justifying the cost of IT quality.
2. Supports ability of IT to measure and improve internal performance and service provisioning.
3. Defines IT in terms of services rather than systems.
4. Supports improvement of user productivity.
5. Improves communication and information flows between IT and organization business departments.
6. Provides a framework for IT to support regulatory challenges.
7. Improves ability of IT to adjust as business opportunities and challenges are presented.
8. Improves relationship of IT with the business - builds trust.
9. Provides a single, definable, repeatable, and scalable documented framework for IT best practices that flow across the IT organization.
10. By increasing the knowledge available to first level support through Problem Management, organizations can increase the first level resolution rate, and then in turn decrease the required work by second level that is typically 4-6 times more expensive.
11. Reduction of elapsed incident handling time by agreeing to improvements between first and second level support.
12. Quicker root cause analysis and improved impact and risk analysis for Change Management due to available Configuration Management information.
13. Release Management requires improved testing, resulting in a reduction in a number of failed changes.
14. Organizations develop and scale their internal processes to compete in the knowledge based economy, the ability to exploit and automate intangible assets, such as knowledge and business processes, has become far more decisive that simply managing static physical assets.
Conclusion:
As discussed in this paper, the benefit of adopting and implementing ITIL are many. Organizations have cut costs, improved processing time and enhanced their overall service significantly. People don't buy products they buy services. By the use of ITIL IT managers can provide customers with better services. The accurate measurement of service provides them with strategic information for decision making in their mission for return on investment and the alignment of IT with the businesses.
Hence ITIL encourages organizations to stop and think about why something is to be done before thinking how. So from small organizations to multinational enterprises and anything in between, this best practice framework has helped many improve efficiencies, giving IT more importance in businesses.
Resource Center - www.ogc.gov.uk, www.best-management-practice.com, http://www.itil-officialsite.com, Pink Elephant Inc.
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