Service Matters! ITSM & IT Management

Ever walked into a fast food chain and not found a menu to order from. Usually their menu is right up front on the wall (right in your face). What about a restaurant without a menu card. Imagine how hard it will be to communicate exactly what you want to eat as a customer.

So on taking orders and delivery, the food industry has got it pretty much right, but so have several others. Think Retail – where prices of products are clearly marked, product features described etc.

Now think IT. There are very few organizations where one gets a sense of what IT truly delivers to its customers at what cost, at what performance level, conditions and so on.

This is a real problem and that’s where an IT Service Catalog can show the most value. Make IT visible! Communicate! Deal with the perceptions! All great statements that echo through the Service Catalog.

From ITIL V2 where we had the concept of a static Service Catalog to the present V3 days where Service Catalogs are dynamic and real, the industry is connecting the dots and moving forward.

But then think again. The price that a fast food chain provides on its menu is the result of a careful understanding of the complexity of operations and the real costs that go into the delivery. Yes the complexity is hidden from you as a customer, but how does IT address that complexity and the costs associated with its operations. Where does one start?.

Utility consumers can subscribe to services – eg for residential power or power for businesses so can one do that for IT Services?

What about “make your own Service menu” like “make your own pasta”! Is there flexibility within IT Services to accomplish this?

Overall, as we have seen through our engagements, dealing with the IT Service Catalog Strategy is critical. What works for one organization may not really work for the other. But don’t forget the execution. That’s what will enable companies to run IT as a business. And make IT Services visible!

So is your organization ready for an IT Burger?

Posted by Ramshankar Ramdattan at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Bhoopendra Adhikari

Apparently a lot of people and from all over the globe. And they are not your customers. Today’s conviction of 11 persons for the one of the largest ever data breach in terms of records is an indicator of this. What’s so interesting about this? Here are some facts:

1. Three of the defendants are U.S. citizens, one is from Estonia, three are from Ukraine, two are from China and one is from Belarus, the DoJ said. One individual is only known by an online alias, and his place of origin is unknown.
2. The stolen data was kept in the servers in East Europe and US and sold to criminals over internet. Banks in Eastern Europe were used for transactions.

    

This is not the plot of a technology thriller but a reality and a costly one too. It cost at least one vendor TJ Max 60 Million USD.

The spread of internet is not without these undesirable consequences. First, low resistance from the target, chances of higher yield, better and farther reach with low skill base and ease of covering your real identity in case of detection are some factors which are attracting a large set of people across the globe to try their luck on your data. Secondly a number of countries have inadequate cyber laws which make it easier to hide and sell the data online.

Add these two and you have a big collaborative internet community waiting for you to loose your oversight and make a fast buck out of it. The bad part is with low entry barriers this community will keep growing and you can’t help it. The good part is, if you have robust set of controls you are not worth spending more time on and they will move on to the target which offers lesser resistance. In other words your effective controls will make you unattractive for large set of these people who are scouting the internet for what they see as a low hanging fruit!

So if you are managing your controls effectively you may be doing better then you believe. You may not be aware but every time a news like this is public, the chances that your organization was the one where it was attempted (unsuccessfully) before the victim are real. There are lots of people around the world who are interested in the data you are trying to secure!

Posted by Guest Author at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Gaurav Uniyal, Consultant, Infosys Technologies

Identify and implement Quick Wins - I recently worked on an assignment with a large financial organization to implement “Quick Wins” for IT process improvements. Implementation of the identified “Quick Wins” not only addressed the immediate issues, but also helped IT organization in getting much needed management attention and funding for the next phases. “Quick Wins” helps in keeping the buzz alive, justification of investments and provides an opportunity to fine-tune the long term strategy. However, careful planning is required while designing the “Quick Wins”. It should address immediate issues within a short period of time, and result in clear demonstrable benefits.

Establish interfaces with other processes/tools - Once, I inquired one of my colleagues - What is the business value of CMDB? He answered - Nothing . And I believe this answer was correct to some extent. A CMDB does not carry any value in itself. It is just a database storing information about multiple CIs and its relationship. The value comes when the residing information is effectively consumed by other processes/ tools e.g. CIs relationship information for impact analysis, release planning, root cause analysis etc. If you are planning for the implementation, always remember 3 key words - Integrate, Integrate and Integrate

Develop metrics to measure the success - The real performance of CMDB can only be measured if in some ways, the low level metrics could be associated with high level implementation goals.  We designed a metrics framework during one of our implementation engagements which is worth sharing. At the top level, we identified the CSFs - Critical Success Factors. For each of the CSFs (e.g. Usefulness of CIs information), KPIs were designed which were further drilled down into detailed metrics (e.g. Number of unauthorized Licenses reclaimed). This model helped in establishing linkages between the implementation goals and operational tasks efficiency, thus providing useful and accurate information to the Management team on CMDB performance.

Posted by Guest Author at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Yesudas Jayson Kurisinkal, Consultant, Infosys Technologies.

I have always found the term Software License Management to be quite ambiguous with regard to the features of the tools available in the market for this.  Some vendors offer very exciting features like license harvesting, and consequently cost savings. However, in the last two asset management tool implementation projects I handled for clients, Software License Management was nothing more than maintaining the records of all the software licenses of the organization in a central Asset Management tool. In one case, we integrated this with the procurement tool so as to get the financial information directly into the Asset management system. Is that all?

I checked the features of some of the leading tools available in the market and realized that Software License Management is usually a generic title which includes multiple functionalities of application usage monitoring and license management.
Hence, when an organization refers to Software License Management, it is referring to one or all of these three requirements:

1. Software license inventory management - Keep a record of the Software licenses purchased by the organization with attributes like Vendor name, number of licenses, support contract etc.

2. Software license compliance tracking - Keep a check on how many instances of a software is installed across the organization and whether it is matching with the license agreement with the vendor.

3. Software metering and license harvesting - Meter the usage of the application throughout the organization, analyze the sparingly used (or unused) instances of a particular software and reuse them elsewhere.

Preferably, these functionalities should be implemented in this order to achieve complete Software License Management. Some questions to be asked before implementation:

• Which licenses are to be tracked?
• What are the licensing models (per copy, per user etc.)?
• Should we track number of instances or the actual usage of software?
• How much will it cost to track (tools and implementation effort)?

We will look at these three functionalities in detail and understand what tools are needed for implementing them, in my next post.

Posted by Guest Author at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nicholas Carr recently came out with his latest book "The Big Switch". But I only just finished reading his take on "Does IT Matter". Don't worry - I won't reopen that debate here  But an interesting conversation a few weeks back with a colleague on IT budget cuts and what ITSM should focus on in such a scenario, triggered some thoughts.

In the section "Managing the Money Pit", Carr talks about how the basic assumption of IT spends going down - and not up - is becoming a reality. Nothing earth-shattering there, but a simple reminder to all of us ITSM practitioners and consultants on the need to constantly sweat our ITSM investments. And where better to start than your existing ITSM tools.

In that context, I would like to introduce Yesudas Jayson Kurisinkal.

Yesudas has been involved in rolling out ITSM/ESM tools - both Infrastructure Monitoring as well as Service Management - for large organizations globally. He has worked on the leading tools in this space. I am inviting him to share his experience on ITSM implementations from a tools perspective. In his blogs, he will explore topics on how you can get the most from your existing tool vendors, the extent of customization you should look towards and integration with your other IT systems.

Over to you Jayson.

Posted by Arvind Raman at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)