Service Matters! ITSM & IT Management

Posted by Ravindran A Varier 

After a lot of deliberation and rethinking and after about 20 days of preparation, I finally made up my mind to take the ITIL v3 Foundation Course. A rainy afternoon welcomed me to put my plan into action. As I went to the test centre, I kept reminding myself that this is a perfect business case wherein I have to concentrate on a break-even for the investment than arriving at huge ROI.

For all those who have been used to ITIL v2 concepts, v3 Foundation would come as a shower after the drizzle. And the best way to enjoy this downpour is to get drenched in it. What I mean is that while v2 concentrates only on Service Support and Service Delivery, v3 comes with a whole lot of concepts ranging from Service Strategy, designing the Service Design Package to transitioning them into Operations, complete with a framework for Continual Service Improvement. A humble request to all the prospective test-takers – Do not have a schoolboy approach of preparing only a handful of key concepts because the 40 questions will literally take you through every nook and cranny of these 5 service lifecycles.

During my preparatory phase, I had used websites like http://www.itilprime.com/ and http://www.itilquestions.com/ to understand the test-taking pattern and sample question formats. Of course, some of the information in these websites cannot exactly be termed as encouraging, like – “anyone who has ever done the ITIL v3 Foundation exam can attest to you that it won't be easy to pass”. J http://www.itilquestions.com/

My Test Experience:
Out of the 40 questions, at least 15 were absolute sitters. There were questions like:
-          What does C in RACI model stand for?
-          Define Risk.
-          What is the objective of Service operations?
-          Define Demand management, etc.
to boost your confidence and hopes (of clearing!)

At least 10 questions were complicated with about 5 of them being highly confusing. Similar to v2, questions of the type – ‘What BEST describes…’ will have all the four options seem to be likely answers.

Questions on Request Fulfillment, Availability management had options which tested the fundamental understanding of concepts and your memory, as these lines were directly lifted from the v3 books. Also questions on Roles and their corresponding Responsibilities were on the tougher side.

My overall Test experience lasted about 17-20 mins with about 12 mins to answer the questions and another 5 mins to review them.

To sum up, ITIL v3 Foundation actually builds a good foundation to understand ITIL v3 concepts.

Posted by Guest Author at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

What's common between ITIL and palmistry? For one, both have a substantial number of fanatical followers as well as equally fanatical skeptics. Let's start with ITIL - on one side are folks who believe ITIL to have brought in tremendous benefits, some of these quantifiable and visible directly to business. IT benefits have included efficiencies through standardization to more operational improvements such as reduction in restoration times and safer releases and changes in the environment. And then there is the other end of the spectrum - the set of folks for whom ITIL's all a big sham. Some proclaim it openly, others choose to stay in the closet. At one of the organizations I was consulting with, while we implemented best practices of Incident Management and monitoring, we were very careful not to mention the four letters - ITIL. "Just don't call it that if you wish to stick around." - was the mantra. No problem.

So, where do I stand in this debate? To me, the very point that we are debating about the good vs bad of ITIL shows that there is a much darker and deeper underbelly of IT operations that has got exposed because of ITIL. Call it what you want, if you understand what yor business problems are and are implementing "next practices" to sort these out, you are well on your way to getting there.

Alright. So, why did I start with the palmistry comparison? Like many, I enjoy hearing the various interpretations of what all those lines mean. And more importantly, the person I would like to introduce here is a practitioner in both these areas - ITIL and palmistry. Ravindran Varier joined us after completing his MBA from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. He has worked in operational areas such as Remote Network Management and Wireless Networking. He is also an avid traveler who's crossed all the deserts, mountains and plains of India.

So, what does your future hold? Find out through his blogs ...

Posted by Arvind Raman at 05:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my last blog I talk about how and why organizations start on the ITSM journey and how ITIL acts as a stepping stone and a guide at a very high level during this transformation journey.

While it is true that ITIL has a comprehensive set of best practices which cover all aspects of service management, this is also true that adopting best practices and achieving best practices results is not a fast track approach, nor is a quick win option for any IT organization.

Probably this is the reason why most of the ITSM Initiative in my experience, face road blocks in their initial stages of transformation journey. I have seen number of project directors struggling to clearly articulate following aspects of the transformation initiative and seeking external advice even for drafting the business case and project overview documents:

·         Actual Complexity of ITIL adoption journey, due the insufficient implementation knowledge & experience.

·         A clear understanding of the starting point, intermediate milestones and end state of the ITSM journey.

·         Articulation of KPIs and measurements to justify the Return On Investment (ROI) from the transformation initiatives.

·         Definite methods of implementation, communication and validation to ascertain the goals achievement.

Having said that there is no short cut method to adopt the best practices, I still see a strong urge and huge traction within IT organizations to adopt the best practices as prescribed in ITIL, more so with the expanded scope of ITILv3. As I understand the problem statement for ITSM initiatives, what actually needed is a complimentary set of methods, tools and techniques which is based on these best practices and has a proven solution for implementation.

If I had the mandate of achieving ITSM transformation through best practices, I would always look out for any such tool, framework and methodology, which can help me achieve the ITSM transformation goals quickly, effectively with measurable results within fixed, predictable and cost effective budget. I’m sure this will make things lot easier for the decision makers, project directors and for business to adopt ITSM transformation, create significant buy in and see results in a quicker, smarter and smoother manner.

Here’s some food for thought to readers and pointer for my next blog:

Do we have any such tool, methodology, technique readily available in the market?

And if not what is the potential for service providers and product companies to develop such an innovative stuff to address the needs?

Posted by Guest Author at 12:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Commodities trading business like other trading businesses operates in a highly charged environment. Mere delay of seconds can cause huge financial or reputation damage. Reputation is something trading community guards zealously and worries about the most besides annual bonuses.

How does this highly charged business environment impact IT service management? Is IT service management staff working in trading industry any different from their counterparts in other industries? What is so special about trading business and why IT staff in this business generally suffers higher stress levels? A mere visit to the trading floor would be sufficient to get answers to these and many other related questions.

Firstly traders do not know or care about the concept of service desk. Traders are used to the concept of desk side support. They are also used to screaming. Moreover no one blames them for screaming. People understand the reasons behind such behaviour. What would you do if you are unable to execute that all important deal and markets are about to close. In order to handle their IT issues you find a bunch of IT staff located on the floor itself helping out with IT incidents. These people in turn call the service desk and log incidents for the traders and follow up on progress.

The other aspect peculiar to trading business is the service level agreements. Business wants the best and is willing to pay for it. You will only find the best equipment – from computer monitors to application software. Emphasis is on first call resolution hence experienced and highly skilled people work in second line support groups. It is respectable to be part of second line teams.

Lastly, compliance in trading business is sacrosanct. Everything from instant messages, emails, and voice conversations are recorded and archived for years. Access control is of paramount importance. IT service management roles, responsibilities and access levels are documented in detail and refreshed periodically.

Failure of industry players such as SemGroup in not common but contributes to the already charged environment. Good IT service management does help to soothe the frayed nerves.

Posted by Guest Author at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes, sitting back and thinking afar, I think about what effect ITIL has on the common masses. Does the average person walking on the street care about how an IT organization implements its infrastructure? Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management - so what? I am afraid I don't find a direct answer. But then again I look at some amazing examples of how Information Technology is completely changing the life of people around us. There is a plethora of examples from e-governance initiatives to what the Indian Railways has quietly achieved through the centralization of ticket bookings. IT for the masses and ITIL for an effective IT is the mantra of this generation. There are a ton of opportunities waiting to be explored.

And intent straight from the heart speaks far louder than words. Here's one such example. Introducing Gautam - "I started my IT career selling Apple computers to pre-press & publishing outfits in India in the year 1993. That experience taught me that technology can be simple yet extremely powerful. I firmly believe that common people especially in our country can benefit significantly from the use of information technology but are being “crowded out” by the private sector. My dream is to start a company which would focus on developing simple, inexpensive & useful solutions for the common man of our country."

Posted by Arvind Raman at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don’t know about you, but I have worked in the IT industry for a while and I still see a lot of the jazz and hype in terms of what IT can do for companies. Here are some typical statements:

“IT can transform your business”
“IT working with you as a strategic business partner”
“Achieving competitive advantage in business with IT”

Innovation is another term that we all love to use. Innovation to me should be more than just good quality creative solutions based on industry practice to suit the client environment, it is transformative. Why not read more and join my POLL...

Posted by Bruno Calver at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The trends that made the difference - Posted by Yesudas Jayson Kurisinkal

The past decade has sparked several noteworthy developments in Infrastructure Management Services (IMS), like the acceptance of ITIL , Remote Management of Datacenters and Off-shoring of Services, and new models in computing. Let’s examine some of these key trends.

Infrastructure Management tools have progressed from times where a Sysadmin relied on custom scripts or open-source tools. There was an MRTG box in every Datacenter; MRTG being open-source, functional and with less computing overhead. The late 90’s saw the emergence of Enterprise Management Software (EMS) combining server, network, database, application and desktop management. While implementing it was a nightmare then - due to the tool immaturity and improper planning – today, we have success stories of EMS deployments.

Right from the early days, Sysadmins would sit outside the datacenter and work remotely, primarily for two reasons – it’s extremely cold there, and you can’t take coffee inside! So they would connect from their desktop to the devices via tools like telnet or VNC . Whenever a cold-restart or a tape change was needed, they’d walk across into the datacenter, get the job done and get back.

During early 2000, with Global Delivery Model becoming the industry buzz word, IMS also adopted Remote Administration of Infrastructure. In one of the projects I was involved in, the datacenter was a 30-minute drive from my residence.  Any failure requiring physical presence necessitated me driving all the way to the datacenter and doing a cold restart of the machine or boot from the BIOS.  Except for this and changing tapes, we essentially did everything from the remote office and even from a remote country!  Two technological advances that significantly aided Remote Administration were KVM-over-IP devices (which enabled remote access to the consoles even at BIOS level) and Robotic Tape libraries.

Ask any IT Manager to list the most significant happenings in IMS in the past decade, and you will surely find ITIL right on top. Disregarded by many initially, we nonetheless saw the emergence of ITIL and the numbers celebrating its benefits. Consequently, several other concepts also emerged, like CMDB, BSM and BSA. It made sense to view IT from a business perspective, especially in times of cost-cutting. These concepts are not new, but analyzing them from a business/service angle gave them a better structure, helped in prioritizing and getting the buy-in from management.

What’s next? The new wave, as in any other industry, is to paint it green! It has been noticed that aside from being beneficial for the planet, energy-efficient IT Infrastructure also saves costs. Many analyst and service firms have already started creating service offerings in this line. IBM released Tivoli Monitoring for Energy management recently, and many other vendors are to follow suit.

Let’s therefore look forward to a more business-friendly and environment-friendly Infrastructure Management!

Posted by Guest Author at 06:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)