A practical approach to delivering ITSM

During the past decade, the pendulum has swung all the way from abundant IT spending through to IT being seen as a significant business cost. This perceived lack of benefit delivered to the business compared to the size of investment in IT has resulted in a spate of cost cutting and outsourcing, rationalization of IT spending and the beginning of business owners holding IT responsible for costs and quality of services.

With the perception of IT now starting to inch back towards a more reasonable and balanced position – one where its value to the business is, albeit sometimes grudgingly, being recognized – IT needs to reposition itself as a trusted partner with the ability to quantify that value to the business. The introduction of governance and compliance requirements is also contributing to the need for IT to turn up the dial on its role as a business service enabler.

IT service management (ITSM) as a concept has long been purported as the way for IT to construct its services in order to deliver on business requirements, while service level agreements provide a means for measuring IT performance. Although there is a large volume of literature available around ITSM, measuring the success and effectiveness of ITSM is no trivial task and IT organizations have been searching for a simple, structured approach to both implement and quantify ITSM value.

Delivering IT service management requires two key concepts – first, integrating the IT lifecycle by connecting the application developer, IT professional and (most importantly) the business user constituents to facilitate closer connection between business requirements and IT service capabilities for meeting those requirements. The second concept is the notion of continuous improvement or optimization of the IT infrastructure – often referred to as increasing IT maturity – to better align with and be more responsive to fast changing business needs. Formal service management improvement projects are often utilized by IT organizations for increasing IT operational maturity.

Connecting the IT lifecycle

The Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) is Microsoft’s long-term vision for radically simplifying IT, with one of the key pillars being the capability to connect the IT lifecycle, enabling applications running across the IT operational environment to deliver on business service level requirements. The end objective of DSI is to deliver self-managing dynamic systems – resulting in a mature and responsive IT environment capable of effectively responding to business needs.

DSI is about building software that enables knowledge of an IT system to be created, modified, transferred and operated on throughout the lifecycle of that system. This includes knowledge of the designers’ intent for those systems, knowledge of the environment in which the systems operate, knowledge of IT policies that govern those systems, and knowledge of the user experience associated with those systems. By capturing this information in software models – using a variety of authoring and development tools – a codified connection is created between the application development, IT operations and business users, cutting out potentially costly manual human interaction.

Today, software models that capture the health and structural aspects of hardware and software can be created in the form of management packs for Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) and Visual Studio, which provide the first model-based connection between the application developer and the operational environment. Longer-term, all facets – software, hardware, network (components and configurations) and behaviors – of a system will be modeled using a schema called the System Definition Model (SDM).

Infrastructure optimization

Embarking on an infrastructure optimization journey brings its own challenges – such as determining where to start, how to measure maturity and how to quantify benefits obtained through this investment. Service management improvement projects have resulted in varying degrees of success, and organizations continue to search for a simplified roadmap and approach to help ensure that these projects deliver on the end goal. Too often, projects are sidetracked into a quest to implement process for the sake of process, or to obtain a ‘level’ or ‘tick-box’ for implementing an industry standard framework or to obtain a certification. It is imperative that organizations do not loose focus on the end goal – implementing service improvement projects and processes in the context of improving business performance.

Increased maturity of the IT infrastructure is achievable through various approaches – by implementing the latest technologies in a quest to increase capabilities, by implementing management best practices and process in the existing environment, by investing in automation of repeatable processes and activities, by pursuing industry frameworks and certification, or a combination of all or any of these. It is difficult to separate marketing hype from real substance when considering the best approach – what is needed is a systematic and structured approach to help individual organizations select the best road to reducing the cost of IT.

Improving the maturity of the infrastructure is not only about reducing cost – although some organizations would be content to draw the line at containing IT costs and delivering ‘acceptable’ levels of service to the business. Forward-thinking organizations derive value in investing in IT beyond the cost-containment stage, considering IT as a strategic asset – providing competitive advantage and business agility. To get to this stage, the infrastructure needs to be optimized to the level where IT is providing a dynamic, sophisticated, well-managed infrastructure, flexible and responsive to meeting the organizations changing business needs. Investment in IT for achieving this stage might not necessarily translate to cost savings; however, the benefits are where IT truly delivers ITSM – helping the business to be agile – and the IT investment can be offset against the incremental value the business is able to deliver.

Improving infrastructure maturity revolves around three very important aspects – technology, process and people. Tools and technologies of ever-increasing sophistication are continuously released, aimed at providing better capabilities and experiences – and indeed implementing these technologies can contribute to delivering enhanced IT capabilities at a reduced cost. Implementing up-to-date tools is only the tip of the iceberg (as a significant percentage of IT cost is a result of how technologies are implemented and operated), and it is often the lack of process applied to the technologies and tools that leads to downtime, human error and spiraling costs. Addressing the process associated with managing IT has therefore become prevalent when organizations embark on service improvement projects.

The third aspect is probably the most complex – people. Human costs represent the greatest IT costs by far. People implement new technologies, people operate environments, people define and follow processes. When embarking on a service improvement engagement, applying best practices and implementing a well-defined systems management process ironically often requires the employment of costly consultants and services. Finding the right balance between investment in technologies, processes and people are therefore imperative when considering service management improvement projects.

The Microsoft approach

Microsoft’s approach to the infrastructure optimization challenge is two-pronged: defining and simplifying the approach to IT process improvement, and building the best practices and process directly into the technology and tools. Not only does this increase the capabilities of the infrastructure, it also increases the productivity of the people involved. Embedding the process as part of the technology – to facilitate process as part of the way people operate the environment – can potentially be much less costly than re-tooling organizations around process and applying process ‘on top of’ non-process oriented tools and technologies.

From a process perspective, Microsoft fully supports the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). ITIL is a widely accepted approach to IT service management, providing a comprehensive and consistent set of best practices associated with systems management. In keeping with ITIL’s spirit to ‘adopt and adapt’, Microsoft has developed the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF). MOF extends the ITIL code of practice to support distributed environments, and extends the ITIL guidance into practical operational application. One of the aspects provided by MOF is the definition of 21 service management functions (SMFs) describing the series of management functions that are performed when operating an IT environment, and detailing the ITIL-based best practice approach for how to perform these functions.

However, although it is very useful to have a ‘cookbook’ for how to practically implement ITIL-based processes and best practices, this still does not solve the problem associated with service management improvement projects – where to start, and which set of functions to improve first to derive maximum impact and benefit for the business. To this end, Microsoft has created a simple online self-assessment tool, stepping through a series of questions associated with each service management function, which results in a snapshot view of the level of an organization’s relative ‘maturity’ in each area – providing a quick and simple way to identify ‘trouble spots’ in the environment.

Organizations can elect to follow the online assessment with an in-depth on-site operational assessment service offering. The operational assessment consists of a Microsoft consultant or partner conducting a more comprehensive evaluation around the service management functions and process implemented in the environment, resulting in a tailored report and roadmap for embarking on a stepped, modular improvement journey based on the most critical areas identified. It provides an actionable plan for systematically improving the maturity of the environment – in a stepped and measurable fashion – while minimizing the services engagement costs.

The Microsoft Operations Framework Business Value Service Management Assessment (SMA) described above provides the framework for identifying the right problems, qualifying them and creating an actionable roadmap for improvement. The result is 5-7 meaningful projects that can be measured, delivering a quantifiable impact to the business.

On the technology and tools side, Microsoft is taking the implementation of ITIL-based process and best practices a step further – by building the workflow, knowledge and best practices directly into technology and tools. The System Center technology offering is based on the Microsoft Operations Framework, providing the construct for managing the IT operational lifecycle, for delivering service-oriented capabilities in support of business requirements, and for increasing the maturity and capabilities of the IT infrastructure to better deliver ITSM to the business. As the System Center family of products evolves, each new version provides an increased level of workflow, process and best practices built into the technology itself, connected across the products themselves.

Simplifying the road to service improvement

The bulk of the guidance, tools, services, technologies and approaches to help business increase the maturity of their IT infrastructures associated with IT service management target IT professionals, assuming in-depth knowledge of technology capabilities and IT processes. To help simplify the IT maturity conversation even further, Microsoft developed an Infrastructure Optimization Model (IOM), using industry best practices and Microsoft’s own experiences with enterprise customers. The model is based on the Gartner Infrastructure Maturity Model and MIT’s Architecture Maturity Model, and outlines four levels of infrastructure optimization that provide a flexible framework for use as a benchmark for technical capability directly linked to business value.

In conclusion, the road to ITSM lies in remaining focused on the objective of service and business performance improvement, and approaching any service improvement effort or project with that in mind. Microsoft provides a simple, structured, stepped and modular approach along with tools and services to help organizations focus on exactly that objective, helping to navigate and steer around the pitfalls associated with service management improvement efforts.