ITIL - Event Management

Overview

Event is defined as detectable occurrence that has significance for the delivery of IT service. Events are created by Configuration Item (CI) or the monitoring tools.

Event Management ensures that all CIs are constantly monitored and define a process to categorize these events so that appropriate action can be taken if required.

IT Operation Manager is the process owner of this process.

Event Management can be applied on the following aspects −

• Configuration Items (CIs)
• Security
• Environment Conditions ( e.g. fire and smoke detections)
• Normal activity (e.g. tracking the use of an application or performance of a server)
• Software licence monitoring for usage to ensure legal licence utilization and allocation

There are two types of monitoring tools as described below −

• Active monitoring tools monitor CIs for their status and availability. Any deviation from normal operation is communicated the appropriate team for action
• Passive monitoring tools detect and correlate operational alerts or communications generated by CIs.

Event Management Process

The Event Management Process is self descriptive as shown in the following diagram −

Benefits

Here are the several benefits of Event Management −

• It helps to detect incidents at early stage. Thus incident can be assigned to appropriate team before any service outage occurs
• It removes need for expensive and resource intensive monitoring
• It can also be applied on some service management processes such as Availability management or capacity management. It automatically generates signal when status changes that allow appropriate team to perform early response
• Since it is automates, hence provides increased efficiency