An article I wrote for OpenSource magazine published yesterday, you may comment here!
http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/493465.htm
Showing posts with label Service Management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Service Management. Show all posts
01 February, 2008
04 April, 2007
Service Level Management and SOA. more confusion?
Service Level management in an ITSM context
Everyone into ITSM may use the Service Level Management process to maintain and improve IT Service quality through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring and reporting to meet the customer’s business objectives.
Service Level Management is the name given to the processes of planning, coordinating, drafting, agreeing, monitoring and reporting on SLAs, and on the on-going review of service achievements to ensure that the required and cost-justifiable service quality is maintained and gradually improved.
One of the activities related to that process, is the creation of a Service Catalogue which was subject to another post: “Service Catalog, what do you exactly mean?” where I tried to distinguish the different types of catalogues when we refer to either an ITSM or an SOA environment.
Most of the time companies which have implemented a service desk have a SLM module which allows defining different kinds of level agreements:
Everyone into ITSM may use the Service Level Management process to maintain and improve IT Service quality through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring and reporting to meet the customer’s business objectives.
Service Level Management is the name given to the processes of planning, coordinating, drafting, agreeing, monitoring and reporting on SLAs, and on the on-going review of service achievements to ensure that the required and cost-justifiable service quality is maintained and gradually improved.
One of the activities related to that process, is the creation of a Service Catalogue which was subject to another post: “Service Catalog, what do you exactly mean?” where I tried to distinguish the different types of catalogues when we refer to either an ITSM or an SOA environment.
Most of the time companies which have implemented a service desk have a SLM module which allows defining different kinds of level agreements:
- Service Level Agreement (SLA): Which are written agreement between an IT service provider and the IT customer. SLAs are normally used for internal customers
- Operational Level Agreement (OLA): Which are agreement between two internal IT areas/departments e.g. Network Management and Operations
- Underpinning contract: Which are contract between an external supplier providing services to an IT department
Many vendors have dedicated modules which manage the SLM lifecycle with requirements collections, monitoring, escalation, and various dashboards. These modules are obviously linked to other ITIL processes and information is kept in the CMDB. Among various solutions we have different SLM modules from HP-Mercury, HP-Peregrine ServiceCenter, CA Unicenter Service Assure, BMC Service Level Management, Assyst for Service Level management, Expertdesk.
These solutions allow managing the end to end SLM process in an efficient manner through an ITSM view and sometimes the content is routed to a Business Service Management solution or specific modules managing SLAs in dedicated dashboards such as Tivoli Service Level Advisor among other system management solutions.
Service Level management in a SOA context
In a previous post I was referring to one of the intersection between ITSM and SOA. “Amberpoint proposes a module to manage web services, their performance and availability. It can monitor failures, send alerts, display useful information related to problematic web services, automate performance and so on.
HP Mercury Systinet 2 has a module title Contract/Consumer Management which promotes trust between consumers and providers by facilitating service-level agreements and other terms and conditions that bind these two key stakeholders.
Progress Actional Looking Glass provides dashboard and reports which define, sort and prioritize by business or IT metrics (customer, transaction or service type). SLAs are also monitored, managed, measured and alerts are generated. We can also easily monitor and report on SLA's for a specific customer or class of customer such as gold, silver, etc.
For some consistency we should differentiates SLAs in an ITSM framework from SLAs in a SOA. For these reasons a good thing would be to create a new acronym: WSLA for Web Service Level Agreement!!
A WSLA could either be attached to a specific service or to a composite service. WSLAs should then be linked to SLAs. An end user does not have to know what the underlying architecture of his applications is. The Service Level Manager (if such a position exists…) has to negotiate with the customer SLAs. If an IT service is based on various technologies including SOA, he should take into considerations OLAs, Underpinning contracts and WSLAs!!!
WSLAs could also be attached to Underpinning Contracts is web services are either 2rd party services or hosted externally.
Most of the SLM activities remain the same however some of them may differ:
The Service Level Requirement activity will have to be taken into consideration the definition of the WSLAs. It will not be necessary to specify to the customer the underlying technology.
The building of the Web Service Catalogue is different from the Service Catalogue and probably the responsibility should be shared between the SLM manager and the SOA experts.
The SLAs creation and review taking into consideration OLAs and UCs should also consider WSLAs. If possible a hierarchy should be built.
Monitoring should be done at two levels:
- At the SOA level (eventually in SOA center of excellence or an operation dedicated team
- At the ITSM Level (the Service Manager should have a global view on all IT services)
Coming back to Service Level Management and solutions available in the Service Desk arena, companies should be able to only deliver one and only one SLA per service and monitor it. IT and business dashboards should aggregate all underlying categories of SLAs. In other words SOA Governance vendors should be able to provides APIs to upload data related to WSLAs into any IT Service Desk/System Management solution covering the SLM process.
13 February, 2007
ITIL 2007
Le forum pour tous les DSI et les responsables d'ITIL
22 - 23 mai 2007, Hotel Concorde LAFAYETTE, Paris
Les relations entre IT Service Management et Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
22 - 23 mai 2007, Hotel Concorde LAFAYETTE, Paris
Les relations entre IT Service Management et Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
- Les liens entre IT Service Management et SOA
- La relation de certains processus ITIL avec SOA. Ou sont les intersections ?
- La gouvernance SOA, ses composantes, le cycle de vie des services
- Un exemple, comment le processus de Release Management s’intègre dans une gouvernance SOA
- Les outils qui peuvent supporter les processus, l’architecture et la gouvernance
The relationship between IT Service Management and SOA
INFOTECH for Pharma & Biotech
12 - 15 March 2007 Novotel London West, UK
15.05 The relationship between IT Service Management and SOA
Is IT Service Management an emerging subset of SOA? There is a high level of correlation between success at SOA and commitment to ITIL. ITIL is a standardized approach and series of documents that are used to aid the implementation of a framework for IT Service Management. This customizable framework defines how ITSM is applied within an organization, covering processes such as service desk management, incident management, problem management, configuration management, change management, and release management among others.
Service oriented architecture is an architecture that allows to loosely couple capabilities that can be described as reusable services to support a business process. Processes such as availability management, change management or release management “are just business processes that are particular to IT”. We now use this service-oriented architecture to link the business processes associated with IT, with the technology components that make up the IT infrastructure to an integrated platform that includes a configuration management database, an enterprise service bus, and a process orchestration layer. So we can think of IT service management as another use case or usage scenario for SOA. This session will cover xxxxxx's roadmap and reflections in these two domains.
12 - 15 March 2007 Novotel London West, UK
15.05 The relationship between IT Service Management and SOA
Is IT Service Management an emerging subset of SOA? There is a high level of correlation between success at SOA and commitment to ITIL. ITIL is a standardized approach and series of documents that are used to aid the implementation of a framework for IT Service Management. This customizable framework defines how ITSM is applied within an organization, covering processes such as service desk management, incident management, problem management, configuration management, change management, and release management among others.
Service oriented architecture is an architecture that allows to loosely couple capabilities that can be described as reusable services to support a business process. Processes such as availability management, change management or release management “are just business processes that are particular to IT”. We now use this service-oriented architecture to link the business processes associated with IT, with the technology components that make up the IT infrastructure to an integrated platform that includes a configuration management database, an enterprise service bus, and a process orchestration layer. So we can think of IT service management as another use case or usage scenario for SOA. This session will cover xxxxxx's roadmap and reflections in these two domains.
23 January, 2007
Are there any relationship between Demand Management, Requirement Management, Request Management and Change Management?
In the context of IT, Demand Management is a process which manages the complex and strategic IT demand requests issued by the business. In this process we prioritize, consolidate, schedule the requests, enabling the business users and IT to collaborate efficiently at every step, cutting costs and accelerating resolution. Normally, this is an activity belonging to Portfolio Management which is the the process of determining (and monitoring) how much money the enterprise should spend on the various categories of IT-enabled business investments. Demand Management works with both business and its IT peers through an ongoing and iterative process that aggregates demand for IT services, represents the resources requested and their costs to the business, and helps optimize the deployment of IT resources over time. Demand Management is often covered by Portfolio Management solutions or Request Management solutions.
A few examples are Mercury ITG, Clarity (Niku) from CA, Compuware Changepoint and Borland Tempo.
These suites are more in the PPM market than anything else and these vendors should be considering to link PPM suites with IT Service Management suites for several reasons.
Requirements Management is the science and art of gathering and managing user, business, technical, functional requirements, and process requirements within a product development project. The project could be for a new consumer product, a web site, a system or a software application. In all these cases, the five classes of requirements should be represented.
Solutions such as RequisitePro from IBM and Telelogic Doors support that process.
Here we see in some way some identical concepts with Demand Management and potential links also with IT Servie Management.
But let’s still define two additional concepts.
ITIL doesn't have a separate process for Request Management as it does, for instance, with Incident Management in version 2. The Request Management will manage (from request to fulfillment) the goods and services requested by users based on the catalog provided. Standardized goods and services can be made available to the end users through self-service interface or by calling the Service Desk. When handling the request the Request Management will also refer to the SLA.. Version 3 should clarify the situation and define a new process, where Service Requests are now a function of Request Management which ties on the Change Management process (In version 2, Service Requests were a part of the 'Incident Mangement' life cycle).
The Change Management process ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes to minimize the impact of change-related incidents and improve day-to-day operations. Changes are issued either from Incidents, Problems or customer’s requests. There are also touch points between Project Management and Change Management.
Finally and to keep it very simple, everything is about a user asking something to an IT department, with different levels of importance. From a new product to a new service, from a additional or new feature to a physical piece of hardware, allowing the business to be more efficient.
There should be a clear alignment of these concepts with an end to end process, integrating IT Service Management at the end. All demands should end up in the ITIL Change Management process and vendors should integrate their platforms to facilitate that integration.
A few examples are Mercury ITG, Clarity (Niku) from CA, Compuware Changepoint and Borland Tempo.
These suites are more in the PPM market than anything else and these vendors should be considering to link PPM suites with IT Service Management suites for several reasons.
Requirements Management is the science and art of gathering and managing user, business, technical, functional requirements, and process requirements within a product development project. The project could be for a new consumer product, a web site, a system or a software application. In all these cases, the five classes of requirements should be represented.
Solutions such as RequisitePro from IBM and Telelogic Doors support that process.
Here we see in some way some identical concepts with Demand Management and potential links also with IT Servie Management.
But let’s still define two additional concepts.
ITIL doesn't have a separate process for Request Management as it does, for instance, with Incident Management in version 2. The Request Management will manage (from request to fulfillment) the goods and services requested by users based on the catalog provided. Standardized goods and services can be made available to the end users through self-service interface or by calling the Service Desk. When handling the request the Request Management will also refer to the SLA.. Version 3 should clarify the situation and define a new process, where Service Requests are now a function of Request Management which ties on the Change Management process (In version 2, Service Requests were a part of the 'Incident Mangement' life cycle).
The Change Management process ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes to minimize the impact of change-related incidents and improve day-to-day operations. Changes are issued either from Incidents, Problems or customer’s requests. There are also touch points between Project Management and Change Management.
Finally and to keep it very simple, everything is about a user asking something to an IT department, with different levels of importance. From a new product to a new service, from a additional or new feature to a physical piece of hardware, allowing the business to be more efficient.
There should be a clear alignment of these concepts with an end to end process, integrating IT Service Management at the end. All demands should end up in the ITIL Change Management process and vendors should integrate their platforms to facilitate that integration.
05 December, 2006
IT Processes, Business Processes, who is coordinating what?
More and more IT departments refer to IT Governance, Best Practices, quality and processes. To run efficiently an IT shops, processes are supposed to help companies to excel. The disctinction between best practices and processes is not so clear but let’s assume that this is complimentary. Processes are either standardized; refer to existing frameworks such as ITIL, Six Sigma, eTOM and other best practices.
An IT Process is also a Business Process. It has only an “IT Flavour”.
Looking at the Business side, Business Process Reegineering (BPR) and now Business Process Management (BPM) are activities which also look at improving how a Business works. Some companies develop a target Business Architecture describing the product and/or service strategy, and the organizational, functional, process, event, information, and geographic aspects of the business environment.
Very often, based on my experience, and observations, IT processes do not have a process owner. If there are owners, sometimes they are siloed. As an example, the ITIL Incident Management process owner does not work in harmony with the ITIL Availability Management process owner, etc. Sometimes, politics, company’s mindset, or personnel agendas, prevent to do a consistent job.
On the Business side, it happens also that processes are siloed and not cross-functional. The integration between IT Processes and Business Processes is even not considered despite the fact that all Business Processes should be linked to IT Processes. The processes and activities of a Line of Business have Incidents, Problems, issues with availability etc…
The first step would be to have for the IT department a Service Manager (e.g. ITIL) to coordinate all the processes related to IT Service Management. On a parallel, the Business should also have owners for their processes.
Recently I was looking at some documentation related to the SAP ESA (Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture) and found a very interesting comment from Shai Agassi, member of the SAP Executive Board and president of the SAP Product and Technology Group (PTG). He claimed that “Chief Information Officer” function is morphing into two distinctive roles: the Chief Process Innovation Officer (CPIO), and the Chief IT Officer (CITO, to coin a new acronym). In this new model, the CPIO is in charge of innovative business processes and continuous process integration.”
All processes have definetly to be coordinated, IT or not in a consistent way. As improving processes allows to bring innovation, this new role (Chief Process Innovation Officer), would allow companies to create new synergies, between the Business and IT, considering the CPIO as a partner of LOBs, in charge of processes deisgns with the business’ network. That position would require new skills to be developed as part of the IT organization. Such a role would be the best way to create an harmony for IT/Business processes.
An IT Process is also a Business Process. It has only an “IT Flavour”.
Looking at the Business side, Business Process Reegineering (BPR) and now Business Process Management (BPM) are activities which also look at improving how a Business works. Some companies develop a target Business Architecture describing the product and/or service strategy, and the organizational, functional, process, event, information, and geographic aspects of the business environment.
Very often, based on my experience, and observations, IT processes do not have a process owner. If there are owners, sometimes they are siloed. As an example, the ITIL Incident Management process owner does not work in harmony with the ITIL Availability Management process owner, etc. Sometimes, politics, company’s mindset, or personnel agendas, prevent to do a consistent job.
On the Business side, it happens also that processes are siloed and not cross-functional. The integration between IT Processes and Business Processes is even not considered despite the fact that all Business Processes should be linked to IT Processes. The processes and activities of a Line of Business have Incidents, Problems, issues with availability etc…
The first step would be to have for the IT department a Service Manager (e.g. ITIL) to coordinate all the processes related to IT Service Management. On a parallel, the Business should also have owners for their processes.
Recently I was looking at some documentation related to the SAP ESA (Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture) and found a very interesting comment from Shai Agassi, member of the SAP Executive Board and president of the SAP Product and Technology Group (PTG). He claimed that “Chief Information Officer” function is morphing into two distinctive roles: the Chief Process Innovation Officer (CPIO), and the Chief IT Officer (CITO, to coin a new acronym). In this new model, the CPIO is in charge of innovative business processes and continuous process integration.”
All processes have definetly to be coordinated, IT or not in a consistent way. As improving processes allows to bring innovation, this new role (Chief Process Innovation Officer), would allow companies to create new synergies, between the Business and IT, considering the CPIO as a partner of LOBs, in charge of processes deisgns with the business’ network. That position would require new skills to be developed as part of the IT organization. Such a role would be the best way to create an harmony for IT/Business processes.
23 November, 2006
Does an IT ERP make sense?
Despite the fact that some software vendors companies such as ITM Software are considered to deliver such a solution, I would rather qualify this product as a Project and Portfolio Management solution such as Primavera, Artemis, Mercury and others.
Many companies have a wide range of non integrated solutions covering several aspects of IT Governance such as:
-Project Management
-Portfolio Management
-Time Management
-Service Management
-Enterprise Architecture
-System Management
-Security Management
-Asset Management
etc..
For each of these components some of them have associated processes but no real touch points between them and the visibility is quite difficult to get in terms of IT Service quality. Some companies passed certifications such as ISO 9000, ISO 27001, went through COBIT, and are ITIL based etc... But from my various observations, they do not have a consolidated or integrated view of their IT Services which would contribute to the improvement of Business IT Alignment.
Very often, top management including the CIO ask for IT to deliver Dashboards where we can have in real time indicators (KPIs) on the department performance and then be able to benchmark against competition.
Among existing solutions we have, IT Governance suites such as Mercury ITG or CA Clarity, Service Management platforms such as Peregrine Service Desk, Remedy, CA, HP, Asset management solutions, and finally Time Management product. In the system management landscape, Tivoli, CA Unicenter, and lots of various monitor solutions to manage networks. Fiinally, Enterprise Architecure is often covered by companies such as Telelogic (Popkin), Casewise, Metis solutions etc…
My experience would be to claim that first we need to re-engineer the process, have integrated flows between domains in order ro be able deliver these dashboards, finally avoid duplicated activities within an IT Department.
As no vendors today is able to deliver such an “IT ERP” (but probably HP, IBM and CA will be able to deliver this but nor before a couple of years…), an alternative would be to consider services around these platforms and then from a portal, orchestrate those services, provide results in various dashboards. Obviously if we had an integrated platform, that would be easier.
For the time being, mash-up applications are probably the only way to produce an IT ERP.
Many companies have a wide range of non integrated solutions covering several aspects of IT Governance such as:
-Project Management
-Portfolio Management
-Time Management
-Service Management
-Enterprise Architecture
-System Management
-Security Management
-Asset Management
etc..
For each of these components some of them have associated processes but no real touch points between them and the visibility is quite difficult to get in terms of IT Service quality. Some companies passed certifications such as ISO 9000, ISO 27001, went through COBIT, and are ITIL based etc... But from my various observations, they do not have a consolidated or integrated view of their IT Services which would contribute to the improvement of Business IT Alignment.
Very often, top management including the CIO ask for IT to deliver Dashboards where we can have in real time indicators (KPIs) on the department performance and then be able to benchmark against competition.
Among existing solutions we have, IT Governance suites such as Mercury ITG or CA Clarity, Service Management platforms such as Peregrine Service Desk, Remedy, CA, HP, Asset management solutions, and finally Time Management product. In the system management landscape, Tivoli, CA Unicenter, and lots of various monitor solutions to manage networks. Fiinally, Enterprise Architecure is often covered by companies such as Telelogic (Popkin), Casewise, Metis solutions etc…
My experience would be to claim that first we need to re-engineer the process, have integrated flows between domains in order ro be able deliver these dashboards, finally avoid duplicated activities within an IT Department.
As no vendors today is able to deliver such an “IT ERP” (but probably HP, IBM and CA will be able to deliver this but nor before a couple of years…), an alternative would be to consider services around these platforms and then from a portal, orchestrate those services, provide results in various dashboards. Obviously if we had an integrated platform, that would be easier.
For the time being, mash-up applications are probably the only way to produce an IT ERP.
24 October, 2006
Is IT Service Management an emerging component of Enterprise Architecture?
There is a high level of correlation between success at Enterprise Architecture and commitment to ITIL. ITIL is a standardized approach and series of documents that are used to aid the implementation of a framework for IT Service Management. This customizable framework defines how ITSM is applied within an organization, covering processes such as service desk management, incident management, problem management, configuration management, change management, and release management among others.
Enterprise architecture consists of the vision, principles, standards and processes that guide the purchase, design and deployment of technology within an enterprise. It describes the interrelationships between business processes, information, applications and underlying infrastructure for that enterprise. Processes such as availability management, change management or release management are just business processes that are particular to IT. So we can think of IT service management as another use case or usage scenario for Enterprise Architecture.
Many frameworks such as FEAF, DODAF, Zachman and TOGAF among others do not yet consider the relationship to Service Management. Any component of architecture has to change, solves a problem, or relates to a set of software and infrastructure. Business Architecture is all about documenting, changing, viewing specific business processe and makes them more efficient. Business Architecture also allows to understand the business impacts of new products introductions or modifications. Products should be delivered as services and be manages by Service Level agreements.
New products also have to consider its availability and its capacity to perform, based on user requirements.
This demonstrates that running an Enterprise Architecture program, has a lot to do with Service Management! Service Management also has a lot to learm from Enterprise Architecture… As an example, the definition of EA Technical Services can help to build departmental IT Service Catalogues related to Customers Service Catalogues.
Enterprise architecture consists of the vision, principles, standards and processes that guide the purchase, design and deployment of technology within an enterprise. It describes the interrelationships between business processes, information, applications and underlying infrastructure for that enterprise. Processes such as availability management, change management or release management are just business processes that are particular to IT. So we can think of IT service management as another use case or usage scenario for Enterprise Architecture.
Many frameworks such as FEAF, DODAF, Zachman and TOGAF among others do not yet consider the relationship to Service Management. Any component of architecture has to change, solves a problem, or relates to a set of software and infrastructure. Business Architecture is all about documenting, changing, viewing specific business processe and makes them more efficient. Business Architecture also allows to understand the business impacts of new products introductions or modifications. Products should be delivered as services and be manages by Service Level agreements.
New products also have to consider its availability and its capacity to perform, based on user requirements.
This demonstrates that running an Enterprise Architecture program, has a lot to do with Service Management! Service Management also has a lot to learm from Enterprise Architecture… As an example, the definition of EA Technical Services can help to build departmental IT Service Catalogues related to Customers Service Catalogues.
17 October, 2006
Training-evening SMP (Société Suisse de Management de Projet)
1st nov. Lausanne : Training-evening SMP:
ITIL : A Service Management implementation and the evolution to an Operational Excellence
by Serge Thorn (XXXXXX and itSMF Chairman)
Details and registration
ITIL : A Service Management implementation and the evolution to an Operational Excellence
by Serge Thorn (XXXXXX and itSMF Chairman)
Details and registration
16 October, 2006
Enterprise Architecture and Service Management
Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference Lisbon
Lisbon, Portugal October 23-25 , 2006
STREAM #2:Enterprise Architecture Development Tuesday October 24
16:00 – 16:45 Enterprise Architecture and Service Management Serge Thorn, Director IT Research & Innovation (Switzerland)
Synopsis:
Is IT Service Management an emerging component of Enterprise Architecture? There is a high level of correlation between success at Enterprise Architecture and commitment to ITIL. ITIL is a standardized approach and series of documents that are used to aid the implementation of a framework for IT Service Management. This customizable framework defines how ITSM is applied within an organization, covering processes such as service desk management, incident management, problem management, configuration management, change management, and release management among others. Enterprise architecture consists of the vision, principles, standards and processes that guide the purchase, design and deployment of technology within an enterprise. It describes the interrelationships between business processes, information, applications and underlying infrastructure for that enterprise. Processes such as availability management, change management or release management are just business processes that are particular to IT. So we can think of IT service management as another use case or usage scenario for Enterprise Architecture. This session will cover (xxx) roadmap and reflections in these two domains.
Lisbon, Portugal October 23-25 , 2006
STREAM #2:Enterprise Architecture Development Tuesday October 24
16:00 – 16:45 Enterprise Architecture and Service Management Serge Thorn, Director IT Research & Innovation (Switzerland)
Synopsis:
Is IT Service Management an emerging component of Enterprise Architecture? There is a high level of correlation between success at Enterprise Architecture and commitment to ITIL. ITIL is a standardized approach and series of documents that are used to aid the implementation of a framework for IT Service Management. This customizable framework defines how ITSM is applied within an organization, covering processes such as service desk management, incident management, problem management, configuration management, change management, and release management among others. Enterprise architecture consists of the vision, principles, standards and processes that guide the purchase, design and deployment of technology within an enterprise. It describes the interrelationships between business processes, information, applications and underlying infrastructure for that enterprise. Processes such as availability management, change management or release management are just business processes that are particular to IT. So we can think of IT service management as another use case or usage scenario for Enterprise Architecture. This session will cover (xxx) roadmap and reflections in these two domains.
23 September, 2006
EGEE'06 Capitalising on e-infrastructures
The EGEE’06 conference is the major event of the EGEE project where Grid user communities, decision makers, resource providers and developers will discuss how to capitalise on past investments and plan a sustainable future for the Grid. The EGEE’06 conference will be the focus point of a large number of grid projects featuring prominently in both plenary and parallel sessions during the 5 days of this event. Welcome to the key European grid event of 2006!
QA standards overview and (company) implementation choices and benefits
The first part of the presentation will introduce QA standards such as :
- Service Management (ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000-1/-2:2005)
- CMMi
- Quality Management ISO 9001,
- Security Management ISO 2700
The second part will present (company) implementation choices and benefits
Id: 109
Place: CICG CICG,
17 rue de Varembé,
CH - 1211 Geneva 20
Switzerland
Room: Conf. Room 7+8
Starting date: 27-Sep-2006 11:00
Duration: 45'
Primary Authors: Mr. THORN, Serge (Director IT Research & Innovation)
QA standards overview and (company) implementation choices and benefits
The first part of the presentation will introduce QA standards such as :
- Service Management (ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000-1/-2:2005)
- CMMi
- Quality Management ISO 9001,
- Security Management ISO 2700
The second part will present (company) implementation choices and benefits
Id: 109
Place: CICG CICG,
17 rue de Varembé,
CH - 1211 Geneva 20
Switzerland
Room: Conf. Room 7+8
Starting date: 27-Sep-2006 11:00
Duration: 45'
Primary Authors: Mr. THORN, Serge (Director IT Research & Innovation)
05 September, 2006
The art (and difficulty) of selecting an IT Governance Framework
IT Governance is one of those concepts that everyone is talking about.
Many companies after having selected a set of IT Governance pillars are looking for solutions to support them and deliver several types of dashboard to either the Corporate and/or IT Management. But, what are these pillars? Some IT department considers one or more components as IT Governance, some other cumulates several components.
IT Managers very often refer to ITIL, or COBIT, or Balance Scorecards or any other frameworks which will improve efficiency and give some visibility to the business.
Let me briefly describe first what I’m considering as components of an IT Governance, but prior to that, I would like to refer to a very simple definition from the Harvard Business School:
“We define IT Governance as specifying the decision rights and accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in IT”
Fundamentally, IT Governance is concerned about two main things: IT’s delivery of value to the business and mitigation of IT risks.
The components of IT Governance can or should include at least:
- Aligning IT strategy with the business strategy
- Quality Management
- Strategic IT Planning
- Enterprise Architecture
- Project and Portfolio Management (PPM)
- Service Management
- Audit Management
- Security Management
- Risk Management
- Performance Measurement
The list is not exhaustive and could obviously be completed.
I tried to find if there were any IT Governance frameworks available in the market and always ended with specific frameworks related to the components of this IT Governance. ITIL, COBIT, ISO 9000, CMMi and others… Now, from there, where do I start?
What we need is a Framework of Frameworks… where I know where to start, where to pursue, where to end…all of that in an iterative mode..
I recently discovered The Calder-Moir IT Governance Framework http://www.itgovernance.co.uk/page.framework which looks like as a good initiative in terms of standards framing. This has been developed by IT Governance Limited.
Until today, to my knowledge, no single organization has provided a full picture of how to manage IT Governance. Is this framework something which should be seriously be considered or only a way to sell consultancy?
Many companies after having selected a set of IT Governance pillars are looking for solutions to support them and deliver several types of dashboard to either the Corporate and/or IT Management. But, what are these pillars? Some IT department considers one or more components as IT Governance, some other cumulates several components.
IT Managers very often refer to ITIL, or COBIT, or Balance Scorecards or any other frameworks which will improve efficiency and give some visibility to the business.
Let me briefly describe first what I’m considering as components of an IT Governance, but prior to that, I would like to refer to a very simple definition from the Harvard Business School:
“We define IT Governance as specifying the decision rights and accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in IT”
Fundamentally, IT Governance is concerned about two main things: IT’s delivery of value to the business and mitigation of IT risks.
The components of IT Governance can or should include at least:
- Aligning IT strategy with the business strategy
- Quality Management
- Strategic IT Planning
- Enterprise Architecture
- Project and Portfolio Management (PPM)
- Service Management
- Audit Management
- Security Management
- Risk Management
- Performance Measurement
The list is not exhaustive and could obviously be completed.
I tried to find if there were any IT Governance frameworks available in the market and always ended with specific frameworks related to the components of this IT Governance. ITIL, COBIT, ISO 9000, CMMi and others… Now, from there, where do I start?
What we need is a Framework of Frameworks… where I know where to start, where to pursue, where to end…all of that in an iterative mode..
I recently discovered The Calder-Moir IT Governance Framework http://www.itgovernance.co.uk/page.framework which looks like as a good initiative in terms of standards framing. This has been developed by IT Governance Limited.
Until today, to my knowledge, no single organization has provided a full picture of how to manage IT Governance. Is this framework something which should be seriously be considered or only a way to sell consultancy?
01 September, 2006
Why is Enterprise Architecture becoming the “next big thing”?
IThese days, everyone is referring to ITIL as being a pillar of IT Governance but without really understanding if improvement has to be done at the IT operational level or somewhere else… Some people also imagine that Service Management is a way to improve what everyone loves to refer to: “IT Business Alignment”.. My belief is that in can contribute in some way, but is not the primary goal as an objective.
For sure Service Management is a component of IT Governance but other components are worth being looking at such as Enterprise Architecture.
An Enterprise Architecture consists of the vision, principles, standards and processes that guide the purchase, design and deployment of technology within an enterprise. An Enterprise Architecture describes the interrelationships between business processes, information, applications and underlying infrastructure for that enterprise, and provides best practices for technology purchase, design and deployment.
Enterprise Architecture structures and processes govern adherence to an organization’s technology strategy and provide a managed environment for the introduction of new technology.
The Key Benefits and Value proposition can be
- Alignment with the company’s Business Model and Strategy
- Enable business changes, technologically based business opportunities
- Make easier the introduction of new technologies
- Allow standardization
- Information (or data) consolidation
- Reduce enterprise/application integration complexity
- Facilitate outsourcing if required
- Better assets utilization
- Better assess the impact of changes
- Reduced time to market
Coming back to IT Business Alignment, the objectives should be:
- Better understand the company business model (current and future)
- Understand the relationship between the business model and the current and future IT architectures
- Reposition IT such that it is aligned with business strategy, and be able to communicate that alignment to the business community
Build roadmaps showing how IT can create credible solutions that align with the business strategy
For all these reasons. Enterprise Architecture should be considered as a top priority level for IT Departments who wants to be real partners to the business.
29 August, 2006
Will Service Management solutions become SOA Governance platforms?
As a starting point, let’s re-define what a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is… A CMDB is a database that holds a complete record of all configuration items (CIs) associated with the IT Infrastructure, software, hardware, including information about servers, storage devices, networks, middleware, applications and data, i.e. versions, location, documentation, components and the relationships between them.
Configuration Management which is one of the main ITIL processes requires the use of support tools, which include a CMDB. Physical and electronic libraries should be set up parallel to the CMDB to hold definitive copies of software and documentation.
Until now, several vendors have provided through their Service Desk offering, and out of the box CMDB which in some case could be altered. Among these vendors we can find, BMC-Remedy, HP, Peregrine (now HP…), Axios systems, Computer Associates, Mercury (now HP…), IBM, and many others.
Last April, some vendors like CA, BMC, IBM, and Fujitsu announced they would work toward developing "an industry standard for federating and accessing IT information" that would ideally integrate communication between disparate configuration management databases.
CMDBs have become one of central elements of enterprise IT management, so a standards-based approach to this critical functionality is necessary and valuable.
Looking at SOA and the way we define composite applications and services, we definitely need to build the latest on the top of existing IT Infrastructure, software and hardware. In other words, a CMDB could also be used to manage the catalogue of SOA Services!
I would be tempted to think that in the next 2 years, a CMDB will be a modular component, usable by either Service Management solutions, and/or SOA Governance products. A CMDB could become a sort of “plugin” available from various vendors with sets of APIs, and why not web services.
SOAs are distributed computing plans where companies often situate Web services and reuse code and other assets to create efficiencies. Vendors like IBM, Microsoft, BEA, Oracle, and Mercury are creating SOA infrastructure platforms to speed information exchange between different computing machines. A few months ago, prior to HP acquisition, Mercury acquired a SOA company named Systinet. This acquisition strengthened Mercury's position in the high growth SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) market by giving the company leading SOA governance and lifecycle management products.
An integration point should be between the SOA metadata repositories and a configuration management database (CMDB) to manage the lifecycle through to operations. If HP considers the range of acquisition they recently did with Peregrine, Mercury...and Systinet…there would be a high probability, this integration occurs!
Another observation on this future integration is potentially visible with IBM. IBM released recently a CMDB titled Tivoli CCMDB, and also launched a management and security solutions for managing SOA based applications, IBM launched last April IT Service Management platform.
The IBM IT Service Management platform manages SOA based composite applications. It is supposed to offer an approach to defining a framework and solutions for IT service management, including extending self-managing autonomic computing to IT services.
“Tivoli CCMDB uses a Federated model that allows it to be implemented on top of an existing sources of IT data, and serves as an authoritative source of data for configuration items, their relationships, so that when a change needs to be made to any of the IT components, one can understand the impact of that change on other related components. IBM's ITSM platform along with, IBM Tivoli security and compliance products like Tivoli Access Manager and Tivoli Federated Identity Manager delivers a complete end-to-end solution for the "manage", "secure" and "compliance" of distributed SOA applications.”
IBM and HP are two companies which will probably compete in both IT Service Management and SOA. They probably understood the synergy between the two worlds, and we can predict a future new generation of CMDBs, modular, accessible from web services, and used for several companies needs: Service Management and SOA Governance.
Configuration Management which is one of the main ITIL processes requires the use of support tools, which include a CMDB. Physical and electronic libraries should be set up parallel to the CMDB to hold definitive copies of software and documentation.
Until now, several vendors have provided through their Service Desk offering, and out of the box CMDB which in some case could be altered. Among these vendors we can find, BMC-Remedy, HP, Peregrine (now HP…), Axios systems, Computer Associates, Mercury (now HP…), IBM, and many others.
Last April, some vendors like CA, BMC, IBM, and Fujitsu announced they would work toward developing "an industry standard for federating and accessing IT information" that would ideally integrate communication between disparate configuration management databases.
CMDBs have become one of central elements of enterprise IT management, so a standards-based approach to this critical functionality is necessary and valuable.
Looking at SOA and the way we define composite applications and services, we definitely need to build the latest on the top of existing IT Infrastructure, software and hardware. In other words, a CMDB could also be used to manage the catalogue of SOA Services!
I would be tempted to think that in the next 2 years, a CMDB will be a modular component, usable by either Service Management solutions, and/or SOA Governance products. A CMDB could become a sort of “plugin” available from various vendors with sets of APIs, and why not web services.
SOAs are distributed computing plans where companies often situate Web services and reuse code and other assets to create efficiencies. Vendors like IBM, Microsoft, BEA, Oracle, and Mercury are creating SOA infrastructure platforms to speed information exchange between different computing machines. A few months ago, prior to HP acquisition, Mercury acquired a SOA company named Systinet. This acquisition strengthened Mercury's position in the high growth SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) market by giving the company leading SOA governance and lifecycle management products.
An integration point should be between the SOA metadata repositories and a configuration management database (CMDB) to manage the lifecycle through to operations. If HP considers the range of acquisition they recently did with Peregrine, Mercury...and Systinet…there would be a high probability, this integration occurs!
Another observation on this future integration is potentially visible with IBM. IBM released recently a CMDB titled Tivoli CCMDB, and also launched a management and security solutions for managing SOA based applications, IBM launched last April IT Service Management platform.
The IBM IT Service Management platform manages SOA based composite applications. It is supposed to offer an approach to defining a framework and solutions for IT service management, including extending self-managing autonomic computing to IT services.
“Tivoli CCMDB uses a Federated model that allows it to be implemented on top of an existing sources of IT data, and serves as an authoritative source of data for configuration items, their relationships, so that when a change needs to be made to any of the IT components, one can understand the impact of that change on other related components. IBM's ITSM platform along with, IBM Tivoli security and compliance products like Tivoli Access Manager and Tivoli Federated Identity Manager delivers a complete end-to-end solution for the "manage", "secure" and "compliance" of distributed SOA applications.”
IBM and HP are two companies which will probably compete in both IT Service Management and SOA. They probably understood the synergy between the two worlds, and we can predict a future new generation of CMDBs, modular, accessible from web services, and used for several companies needs: Service Management and SOA Governance.
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