Service Matters! ITSM & IT Management

Author: Satsang Randhelia 

Recently I bought a Trek 4500 MTB. As I saw it being put together I couldn’t help but draw a parallel with how we assist our clients implement service management tools. The mechanic started with fitting the basic parts like tyres, pedals, and handle bar etc on the frame, he then adjusted the brake wires, derailleur and the saddle post for my safe and comfortable riding. (Likewise we put together the available modules of the ITSM tool and use their features to support the client’s business requirements. We call it tool configuration). Since I planned to ride mostly on the road, the mechanic suggested replacing the default thick tyres with thinner slick tyres. (Likewise we suggest code modifications in existing modules of the ITSM tools. We call it tool customization)

Continue reading "Configuration and Customization: Enemies or Brothers in Arms?" »

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Hello fellow blogosphere inhabitants. I would like to introduce Shaju Krishnan. He is an ITIL certified consultant with the process consulting group of Infosys. He has  around 10 years of experience, of which 5 years has been focussed on IT service management. He is kicking off his blogging adventure with a piece on the hot topic of SaaS: ''Configuring ITSM tools on a SaaS platform - A few facts'' whereby he will be sharing his experiences and learnings accumulated during the configuration of a SaaS ITSM tool for one of  his clients. Over to you Shaju… (Bruno Calver).

Article by: Shaju Krishnan

The Software as a Service (SaaS) model is a way of providing the same software or tool to different customers via a network, usually the Internet. In other words, the software or tool  is not hosted on the customers' individual computers. Under the SaaS model, a vendor is responsible for the creation, update, and maintenance of software. Customers pay a subscription to enable access to the service, which includes a separate license for each person that will use the software. The SaaS model can add efficiency and cost savings for both the vendor and the customer. Customers save time and money since they do not have to install and maintain programs. Drawbacks for the customer are that they do not control the software and customization of programs may be limited.

Continue reading "Introducing: Shaju Krishnan on ITSM tool SaaS implementation" »

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In my first posting on this topic I highlighted the trend of customers who wish to enhance the maturity and efficiency of their IT capabilities are looking towards their development and test infrastructure. The next part then looked at why such infrastructure tends to be built as an ad-hoc deployment rather than a service.

In this post I wanted to, by example, highlight some of the differences of building a pre-production environments service in contrast to a Production service. I want to take the example of measuring application/service availability, a critical measure of the quality of service to clients.,,,

Continue reading "The Next Big ITSM Evolution (part 3) – Spot the difference" »

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Following on from my previous entry I wanted to highlight why development and test environments tend to be a problem area, a root cause analysis if you will.

Rather than looking at some of the symptoms that we see that challenge the on-going operation of Environment type services I think it is important to go back to the moment of birth. The picture I am going to paint is a worse case scenario, but elements of this situation haunt all major development and test environment deployments.

Continue reading "The Next Big ITSM Evolution (pt.2) - An “Environments Service” or just a pile of under-utilized hardware and software adding to the cost base?" »

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Outsourcing has been around for many years and most of the time it is seen as a way to contain and diminish costs. At the same time the general expectation from the client is a ‘quicker and technologically superior solution’.

There can often be a tendency to break up the value chain too much to optimize cost efficiency. Driving home the same analogy, the client has a perspective of value and the Service provider tries to do all they can to get to the highest point possible in the value chain.

As with any ongoing arrangement, Outsourcing has to be governed accordingly. So where is the link between IT Governance & IT Service Management in the outsourcing context? Do they work together effectively? What are the challenges?

Aswin works in the IT Service Management & IT Governance consulting practice with specific focus on ITIL, ISO20000 and CobiT standards. Aswin has worked in various capacities in the past that have allowed him to see the outsourcing of IT in various shapes and sizes, be it the off-shoring of product development, business processes, IT infrastructure or even pure process management.

He is an ITIL v3 expert, has ITIL Masters, ITIL Practitioner (IPRC), CGEIT, PMP, 6 Sigma GB and Lead Auditor ISO27001 qualifications.

His current passion lies in exploring how organizations can adopt effective IT Service Management, IT Governance & Information Security practices to become winning organizations. In this series of blogs Aswin will explore these topics further and invites input and comment from readers and colleagues…

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Posted by: Mitesh Desai

Continue reading "ITSM: Enabling Sustainable IT" »

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Protecting the environment, more than a good gesture, has become a necessity. Professionals working in diverse areas have one common topic in their discussions – environment protection. Instances such as – Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, a documentary on global warming and Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio hosting “The 11^th Hour”, an environment protection TV feature on HBO – indicates the level of attention this topic has gained.

The UN estimates over 2% of total worldwide carbon emissions are generated just by IT and data centres are singled out for particular scrutiny with energy use projected to double by 2011. CIOs are starting to feel the pressure and industry is waking up. In addition, the increase in energy prices and availability constraints are increasingly pressuring the IT to go Green.

Mitesh, one of our consultants, has done extensive research on Green IT and has studied various dimensions surrounding the subject. He has also participated in Green IT assessments for end-user computing devices. Here are some interesting thoughts on IT sustainability and Green from Mitesh. Over to you Mitesh...

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Posted by: Ankur Jain 

For quite some time we have been researching and implementing best practices for Software License Management (Software LM) and how can it help organizations cut down their License costs in an effective way. It is very important in the context of the current economic shift in which every corporate level decision is aiming at cost reduction or optimization. So what is Software LM and why and where should organizations invest?

Continue reading "Software License Management –A Professional View" »

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How Virtualization would impact Business Service Management (BSM) Tools

Posted by Yesudas Jayson Kurisinkal

Last month I was doing a server capacity assessment as my client wanted to move an isolated trouble ticketing tool to their existing Service Desk tool platform, as part of consolidation. The capacity assessment was initiated as per the established methodology of gathering the target server utilization and application performance metrics. While I was analyzing the processor utilization data, the physical processor details, and comparing it to the benchmark set by the tool vendor- I just couldn’t connect the dots! I realized my lack of understanding of a virtual environment; the Service Desk tool was implemented on a Virtual Machine (VM) and the monitoring tool (which I used to collect utilization data) didn’t support virtualization.

Continue reading "Virtualization and BSM Tools" »

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Posted by Yesudas Jayson Kurisinkal 

In December, while the entertainment critics were busy compiling their lists of Top music albums and Top movies of 2008, I was toying with the idea of making a year-end list of ITSM tools. But, as my hands-on experience is limited to specific tools in the industry, I felt that my list would be biased. However, I found a coherent list of the BSM winners and losers of 2008 on Doug McClure’s blog.  Not surprisingly, Mr. McClure gives the Best ITSM concept of the year award to BSM Lite.

Continue reading "BSM Appliance?" »

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Till recently when I along with some of my peers had the opportunity to provide consulting to an American Bank, I had the perception that Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) was all about Infrastructure technologies, maybe, because I come from a Datacenter background where I spent couple of years designing solutions for clients across industry verticals for Infrastructure Management Services.

As I write my introductory blog I am convinced that ILM is not just about implementing storage solutions – what organizations need is an enterprise roadmap to operationalize ILM.

Continue reading "Design Principles for Information Lifecycle Management" »

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“We have too much data, too much information in our shared drives and I guess most of it is of no use to us”. Does that sound familiar??

If No, that is great – you have made your team’s life very simple. If Yes, all the better – you have an opportunity to put a process in place so that you and your team can utilize the vast tracts of  data/information that you have stashed away in your enterprise.

Continue reading "Too much information is ...-not useful-... is an excellent opportunity to put in place a process" »

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-          Subbarao Chaganty, Senior Consultant, Infosys

Paying my sincere respects to William Shakespeare for his most famous phrase “To be or not to be”  from Hamlet, I took the liberty of reconstructing this phrase to lead us to an important topic.

I’ve come across quality and process improvement methodologies like Six Sigma, CMMI and so on, where you would have to dig deeper to better understand the philosophy and the methodology of the framework. However when we come to Lean it’s as self explanatory as it can get for a powerful methodology that it represents. Kudos also to Toyota for developing and promoting this philosophy  in their manufacturing plants to become one of the most popular auto-makers in the world and on top of that keeping it as simple as possible.

Continue reading "To Lean or not to Lean" »

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Posted by Subbarao Chaganty

Lean has been a successful process improvement methodology adopted across the manufacturing domain that identifies avenues for reducing expenditure through the elimination of waste. I was involved in a transformational initiative at a financial services firm that enabled us to leverage the Lean waste reduction principles in the day-to-day IT Service Management operations.

Event Management received its deserved recognition in ITIL V3 and has branched out as a well defined support area within the “Service Operations” phase of the lifecycle. A few of the critical areas of Event Management that we dealt with were Event Notification, Event Detection, Event Filtering, Event Co-relation and  Event Response.

Continue reading "Application of Lean Principles in IT Service Management" »

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Continue reading "Get to the center of the Business- IT Universe!" »

Posted by Ramshankar Ramdattan at 02:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Infrastructure management is a reasonably well established discipline, demonstrated by the fact that we now have version 3 of the pretty much unchallenged IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practice framework.  Many companies have implemented the key support processes that enable them to manage the production environment in a structured and predictable way. In most cases there will be room for building on this foundation or intermediate IT Service Management (ITSM) platform. The thing that many IT managers and CIOs will have in their mind, however, is the diminishing return of further investment in this area.

So, what next?  Increasingly I see organizations, especially those with mature production ITSM processes, showing an interest in their pre-production operations covering development, test and assurance functions.

Continue reading "The next big ITSM evolution - A pre-production environments service" »

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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.

Continue reading "Of ITIL & Palmistry ... Introducing Ravindran Varier" »

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.

Continue reading "Accelerating an ITSM Implementation -2" »

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Continue reading "Highly Charged Business Environment & IT Service Management" »

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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...

Continue reading "IT Hype Fatigue and the Economic Downturn" »

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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?

Continue reading "Managing your software licenses" »

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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.

Continue reading "ITSM Tool Implementation ... Introducing Yesudas Jayson Kurisinkal" »

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Posted by Shraddha Tilloo, Consultant, Infosys Technologies.

While on my way to the airport, I noticed the fast growth taking place in and around the city in terms of the infrastructure, facilities and technology as well. With the new Bangalore International Airport located 40 miles away from city, my journey was a big long 2.5 hrs, cutting across the city gave me an opportunity to closely watch this change.

Soon I realized that in this agile environment, there is no place for slow movers. It applies to the organizations as well where all the initiatives, products and services have to be just in time, quick and at an accelerated speed. It is more prominent and prudent for IT organizations which are coping up with unprecedented pressure of being a cost effective, innovative, agile and customer focused service provider. In the course of meeting these business demands, IT organizations take on the IT Service Transformation journey.

Continue reading "Accelerating an ITSM Transformation" »

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Continue reading "Delivering IT Service Management Consulting from Offshore – Part 2" »

Posted by Bruno Calver at 04:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Delivering IT Service Management Consulting from Offshore – Part 1" »

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- Anurag Bahal, Senior Consultant, Infosys

How do we create a common language of Communication and create Team Synergy using metrics?
America’s first billionaire J. Paul Getty said it “I would rather have one percent of efforts of a hundred people than a hundred percent of my own efforts”

Continue reading "Metrics and Communication" »

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Guest Author: Bruno Calver 

So, now it is time to get to the juicy part, in my opinion, of my series of blogs. What is it like living and working in India? How is it to be over a 1000 miles (or 1609km in metric terms) from the customer? Are things done differently offshore? Is it a professional and cultural shock?

Continue reading "Offshore Consulting – a foreigners view of living and working in India" »

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Guest Author: Bruno Calver

In my previous blog entry I spoke about some of the general aspects of what to consider when specifying an ITSM tools implementation project, as well as some of my experiences working offshore. I also highlighted that it was imperative to show you understood some of the client’s challenges. I want to explore this area in a little more detail and discuss some of the questions and challenges that our client was facing.

Continue reading "An intercontinental tools implementation proposal - part 2" »

Posted by Guest Author at 08:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"I want to implement my Service Management tool out of the box. Minimum customization absolutely."

Given the ballooning costs of maintaining highly customized products, associated vendor lock-in worries and the nightmare of product upgrades on customized product sets, more organizations prefer to go out of the box or with minimum customization with their ITSM product implementations.

Wonderful so far. But how do you decide how much customization is enough? What is that minimum customization threshold value? And more importantly, how do you know when you breach that threshold?

Continue reading "A CMDB for your CMDB" »

Posted by Arvind Raman at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Positioning IT Service management in the V3 context" »

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Posted by Bruno Calver

Recently I was asked to assist an effort in putting together a proposal for an IT Service Management (ITSM) tools project for one of our UK based clients. I am currently working offshore for a while to get a feel for organisational life in India, having recently been transferred from London.

So, what does a process consultant have to do with a technical implementation of an ITSM tool?  Maybe a better question is, ‘Is an ITSM tools implementation just a technical deployment?’ The answer is a positive ‘NO’ (if that’s not a contradiction in terms).

Continue reading "An intercontinental tools implementation proposal" »

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Posted by - Atul Porwal 

Not all organizations are same and neither is the effort required to implement ITSM. In my last blog I talked about the ITSM implementation stages and activities, which provided pointers towards areas “where” the effort is required. “How much” of that effort is required is driven by some of the Organization-specific factors. So what really are those factors ?

Continue reading "Factors affecting magnitude of effort required to implement ITSM" »

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Posted by - Atul Porwal

With more and more organizations moving towards adopting ITIL as the best practices framework for IT Service Management, there is growing curiosity from organizations as to what it will take from effort and cost perspective to reach that coveted ITILized state. Is the ITSM implementation like any other initiative or are there special considerations? What are the different phases during ITSM journey and what are the key effort heads? How to plan meticulously to ensure that there is no “surprise” effort during the implementation? Is there a structured way of estimating effort and is the magnitude of effort required proportionate to the scope and size of the Organization?

Continue reading "How much effort is required to implement ITSM ?" »

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As the popularity and adoption rate of ITIL moves up, it brings along with it the challenging task of estimating ITIL implementation costs and timelines across the organization’s internal units, geographies, service providers and diverse technologies. Like any other project, an ITIL implementation project also needs to be planned meticulously both in terms of tasks as well as implementation duration.

While planning for ITIL implementation, have you wondered - how long does it take to implement ITIL? Are there a defined set of parameters to be considered to calculate efforts? What are the factors influencing effort estimation? What parameters should you tweak if you have some pre-defined time/budget constraints? When should you involve an external consultant? What type of role-profiles should you consider for a particular activity to calculate effort? Does selection and sequencing of processes and tool(s) affect the implementation duration?

If you have asked yourself these questions, here's introducing Atul Porwal. Atul is an IT Service Management and Information Security Consultant. He has been involved in various engagements ranging from consulting and implementation to management of infrastructure and security projects. Atul's experience includes providing process and technology solutions for fortune 500 companies across the globe. He is also a certified ITIL Practitioner. He was recently involved in framing a reference model for calculating effort requirements for ITIL consulting and implementation engagements for Infosys. I am inviting Atul to share his thoughts and experiences through these blogs.

Posted by Arvind Raman at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are 3 questions to kick off 2008 and your organizations' IT Service Management strategy

How old is your enterprise / IT governance model?

Is it relevant to Services and scalable to a wider audience?

What is its measure of performance?

With ITIL V3 being all the buzz and Service Strategy being a core element of this framework, a scalable, stable and performing Governance model to govern services cannot be too far.

Continue reading "Service Governance - a vital step?" »

Posted by Ramshankar Ramdattan at 01:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With V3.0 shifting the focus of ITIL from its traditional process centric approach towards a service lifecycle approach, there is an increased need for defining service centric roles within IT organizations. This paradigm shift of focus from IT systems & processes view to IT services view, which drive creation of values and influence positive outcomes to the customers, have made services the most dynamic “asset” with in an IT organization. As organizations progress towards the “Service-centric” model, the question of "who owns a Service" is being asked within an organization perpetually at various levels and at various times.

Continue reading "Defining the Service Owner role - Part 1" »

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Does web 2.0 hold any meaning from an IT Service Management (ITSM) perspective? RSS feeds, wikis, blogs - do they hold any promise of transforming ITSM as we know it?

Over the last couple of years, there has been an explosive increase in the adoption of web 2.0 concepts fuelled by the internet community. But how much of this has trickled to the ITSM space? Web 2.0 aspects including this blog have largely focused on commenting about ITSM and not really in the actual service delivery.

So are these two huge phenomena going to give each other a skip? Or are their paths destined to cross somewhere? And if so, what does that really mean?

Continue reading "Web 2.0 and ITSM: Long & Winding Roads?" »

Posted by Arvind Raman at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Have you built the right foundation for your ITSM tool? - Part 1" »

Posted by Adarsh Kumar at 07:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)