ITIL Can Be Scary?

This article from Network World titled "10 Reasons ITIL Spooks IT Managers" is a must read for those comtemplating using ITIL in the future as it points out at least 10 reasons that ITIL can bite you back.  Issues like multi-year commitment, Executive support and user/community pushback to name a few issues are illuminated and describe in detail.   This article should help those that are new to ITIL too.

Part 3 - History of BSM - Evolution from ITIL and Network Management

In Part 3 of our tour of Business Service Management, let’s talk a little about the history of BSM and it’s importance in IT today. Today’s BSM has risen from the network monitoring, network management and help desk chaos of the last 20 years.

Network monitoring has become a commodity that you can get for little or nothing.  Most of the products available today are read-only views of limited portions of your networked environment. Network management is known for its complexity…primarily as being too expensive, too long to implement, never fully implemented and requiring tremendous maintenance and support fees  on an ongoing basis.   This has created a backlash in the marketplace.   BSM strives to fill the huge gap that now exists for emerging and progressive organizations worldwide.   The BSM market is enormous and fragmented as the big players from the old network management space are attempting to move into BSM through acquisitions.  It is yet to be seen how successful they will be as the past tells us that making multiple software acquisitions and “duct taping” them into a package to meet the demanding needs of IT has been mixed at best.

The underpinnings of Business Service Management (BSM) were born out of ITSM and can be traced back to the early 1980s.  The British government determined that the level of IT service quality provided to them did not meet their needs. The Central Computer and Telecommunications 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.  This framework later evolved into ITIL.  Most BSM solutions use ITIL and their configuration management database (CMDB) as the core of their offering...  therefore, looking back at the history of ITIL and touching on some of the other frameworks such as BS 15000 and Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) is in order.

ITSM (IT Service Management) and ITIL

ITSM’s objective of improving business functions was not a new concept. The idea of ITSM has been around for years. However, the concept of collecting all service management best practices together within one body of knowledge was new.

The recommendations of ITIL were developed in the late 1980's by the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), which later merged into the OGC.  The goal was to develop an approach that would be vendor-independent and applicable to organizations with differing technical and business needs. This resulted in the creation of the ITIL framework.

ITIL has been readily adopted and accepted as a global standard for IT Service Management since the mid 1990s.  ITIL is now the most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world. Several other frameworks have been arisen since ITIL and are largely based on ITIL and it’s concepts, some of which are listed below.

ITIL

ITIL provides a systematic and professional approach to the management of IT service provisioning and deployment. When effectively implemented, ITIL can provide a series of benefits that can include:

    * Reduced costs
    * Best practice based IT services
    * Improved customer satisfaction
    * Use of standards and guidance;
    * Increased productivity;
    * Better use of skills and intuitive information

ITIL has swept throughout Europe and is now making large inroads into North America and Asia.  It is a very important framework for IT operations staff providing improved quality of services to their enterprise and it’s customers.

BS 15000

BS 15000 is a worldwide standard for IT service management.
It is an integrated set of management processes for the professional delivery of services to an enterprise and its customers. BS 15000 is a derivative of, and complementary to ITIL.  BS 15000 consists primarily of two elements:

BS 15000-1 is the formal specification and provides the requirements for an enterprise as it provide and supports the services it provides internally and externally.

BS 15000-2 describes the best practices for Service Management processes within the scope of BS 15000-1. It includes the code of practice in its scope.   This code is important to enterprises on an ongoing basis that can be audited and are striving to increase the availability and support of their services.

Microsoft Operations Framework

Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) provides operational guidance for IT Operations staff that assists organizations as they strive to achieve mission-critical system reliability, availability, supportability, and manageability of Microsoft’s many products and technologies. MOF is based on the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

MOF is provided and deployed as white papers, operations guides, assessment tools, best practices, case studies, templates, support tools, courseware, and services. MOF’s guidance pertains to the people, process, technology, and management issues found in complex, distributed, and heterogeneous technology environments.

MOF has yet to be widely supported and deployed in heterogeneous environments found in many organizations worldwide.

BSM and ITIL Today

In today’s increasingly complex business environment, it is very important that IT leaders determine and deploy an ITSM framework in support of their services.   It is well documented that this can be the difference between a world-class enterprise and chaotic and unsuccessful business.

BSM is the primary instrument for enterprises to deploy and use to implement ITIL and these other frameworks successfully.   Most BSM solutions focus on and are based on IT services and their successful use.  The CMDB introduced by ITIL is included in most BSM solutions and can be the core element in a professional and best practice deployment of a BSM solution.   In Parts 4, 5 and 6, we will be describing the following:

Part 4:  BSM blueprint and concepts for improving IT operations
Part 5:  Key factors when choosing a BSM solution
Part 6:  BSM best practices and innovations

These next couple of entries will help you discover how BSM uses ITIL to ensure that IT services are deployed professionally and successfully in world-class organizations worldwide.   So read on and enjoy!