ITIL - Service Continuity Management

ITSCM ensures continuity of IT service in time of any disaster. It also evaluates the level of insurance we need to protect service assets and a manuscript to recover from a disaster.

IT Service Continuity Manager is the process owner of this process.

Objective

The following diagram shows the several objectives of ITSCM −

ITSCM Process

ITSCM process comprises of four stages − Initiation, Requirements & strategy, Implementation, and Ongoing operation.

Initiation

It includes policy setting defining scope and terms of reference, project planning and resource allocation.

Requirements and strategy

It includes business impact analysis, risk assessment.

Implementation

It includes executing risk reduction measures, recovery option arrangements, testing and plans.

Ongoing operation

It includes education and awareness, change control of ITSCM plans, ongoing testing.

ITIL - Availability Management

Availability Management (AM) ensures that IT services meet agreed availability goals. It also ensures new or changed service meet availability goals and doesn’t affect the existing services.

Availability is expressed as −

(Agreed service time – Down time)/Agreed Service Time

Availability Manager is the process owner of this process.

Objectives

Here are the objectives of Availability Management −

Availability Management Process

Availability Management process is comprises of following key elements −

• Reactive activities
• Proactive activities

Reactive activities

Activities that are involved in operational roles are known as reactive activities. Activities such as monitoring, measuring, analysis and management of all events, incidents and problem involving unavailability come under reactive activities.

Proactive activities

Activities that are involved in design and planning roles are known as proactive activities. Activities such as proactive planning, design & improvement of availability come under proactive activities.

Availability Management process is completed at following two interconnected levels −

• Service availability
• Component availability

Service availability

It deals with availability and unavailability of service and also the impact of component availability and unavailability on service availability.

Component availability

It deals with component availability and unavailability.

Availability Management sub-processes

The following diagram shows sub-processes involved in Availability Management process −

Identifying vital business function (VBF)

VBF refers to business-critical elements that are supported by an IT service. It is important to document all VBFs to provide better business alignment and focus.

Designing for availability

Although additional costs are incurred in providing high availability solution to meet stringent high availability needs yet it is necessary to provide high availability of those services supporting to more critical VBFs.

Service Failure Analysis (SFA)

Service Failure Analysis is designed to −

• Provide structured approach to identifying causes of service interruption to the user.
• Assess where and why shortfalls in availability are occurring.
• Improve overall availability of IT services by producing a set of improvement for implementation or input to Activity Plan.

ITIL - Capacity Management

Capacity Management ensures proper utilization of available resources and makes future capacity requirement available in cost-effective and timely manner. Capacity Management is considered during Service Strategy and Service Design phases.

It also ensures that IT is sized in optimum and cost-effective manner by producing and regularly upgrading capacity plan.

Capacity Manager is the process owner of this process.

Capacity Management Activities

The following table describes several activities involved in Capacity Management Process −

Sr.No.	Capacity Management Activities
1	Producing capacity plans, enabling service provider to continue to provide services of quality defined in SLA.
2	Assistance with identification and resolution of any incident associated with any service or component performance.
3	Understanding customer’s current and future demands for IT resources and producing forecasts for future requirements
4	Monitoring Pattern of Business activity and service level plans through performance, utilization and throughput of IT services and the supporting infrastructure, environmental, data and applications components.
5	Influencing demand management in conjunction with Financial Management
6	Undertaking tuning activities to make the most efficient use of existing IT resources.
7	Proactive improvement of service or component performance

Objectives

Here are the several objectives of Capacity Management −

Sr.No.	Objectives
1	Produce and maintain an appropriate up-to-date capacity plan reflecting the current and future needs of the business.
2	Provide advice and guidance to all other areas of the business and IT on all capacity and performance related issues.
3	To manage performance and capacity of both services and resources.
4	Assisting with diagnosis and resolution of performance and capacity related incidents and problems.
5	Assess the impact of all changes on the capacity plan, and the performance and capacity of services and resources.
6	Ensure that proactive measures to improve the performance of services are implemented wherever it is cost justifiable to do so.

Capacity Management Elements

Capacity Management broadly includes three components: Business capacity management, Service capacity management, and Component capacity management as shown in the following diagram −

Business Capacity Management

This sub-process deals with forecasting and developing plans for future business needs. It is done by using existing data on current resource utilization by various services.

Service Capacity Management

This sub-process deals with understanding the functioning of IT service, resource usage and variation to ensure that appropriate service agreement can be designed.

Component Capacity Management

This sub-process ensures optimizing use of current IT resource components such as network capacity, bandwidth etc.

Capacity Management Information System (CMIS)

CMIS maintains updated database of resources, commodities etc. which is used by all sub-processes within Capacity management.

ITIL - Service Level Management

Overview

Service Level Management (SLM) deals with negotiating, agreeing and documenting existing services with some level of policies.

Service Level Manager is the process owner of this process.

SLM deals with following two kinds of agreements −

• Service Level Agreement (SLA)
• Operational Level Agreement (OLA)

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

It is agreed document assuring the warranty with regard to level of service quality delivered by the service provider. It is between service provider and the customer.

Operational Level Agreement (OLA)

Unlike SLA it is agreement within the organization.

SLM Activities

The following diagram describes activities involved in SLM process −

Service Level Requirement (SLR) is one of the earliest activities in Service design of Service Lifecycle. SLR needs to be drafted, once the service catalogue has been produced and SLA structure has been agreed

Objectives

Here are the objectives of SLM −

Sr.No.	Objectives
1	Define, document, agree, monitor, measure, report, and review the level of IT service provided.
2	Provide and improve the relationship and communication with the business and customers.
3	Ensure that specific and measurable targets are developed for all IT services.
4	Monitor and improve customer satisfaction with the quality of service delivered
5	Ensure that IT and customers have a clear and unambiguous expectation of the level of service to be delivered

ITIL - Service Catalogue Management

Service Catalogue

Service Catalogue contains information of specific services for which customer are willing to pay. It is a knowledge management tool which allows employees and consultants to route their request for and about services.

Service catalogue is subset of service portfolio and contains presently active services in service operation phase.

Service Catalogue Composition

Each service in the catalogue contains the following elements −

• A identification label for the service
• Description of services
• Related service request types
• Any supporting or underpinning services
• Service categorization or type that allows it to be grouped with other similar services
• Interfaces and dependencies between all services, and supporting components and configuration items (CIs) within the service catalogue and the CMS
• Clear ownership of and accountability for the service
• Associated costs
• How to request the service and how its delivery is fulfilled
• Escalation points and key contracts
• Service level agreement (SLA) data

Service Catalogue Aspects

Service catalogue has two aspects −

Business Service Catalogue

It contains all the IT services delivered to the customer, together with their relationship to the business units and the business process that rely on the IT services.

Technical Service Catalogue

It contains all the IT services delivered to the customer, together with their relationship with supporting services, shared services, components, and CIs necessary to support the provision of the service to the business.

Service catalogue management process is responsible for providing information regarding all agreed services to all authorized persons. This process also takes care of creation and maintenance of service catalogue with correct and updated information.

Service Catalogue Manager is the process owner of this process.

Any change to service portfolio or service catalogue is subject to Change Management process.

SCM Activities

Here are the key activities included in Service Catalogue Management −

• Agreeing and documenting a service definition with all relevant parties
• Interfacing and Service Portfolio Management to agree the contents of the Service Portfolio Management to agree the contents of the Service Portfolio and Service catalogue
• Interfacing with the business and IT Service Continuity Management on the dependencies of business units and their business processes with the supporting IT services contained within the Business Service Catalogue
• Producing and maintaining a Service Catalogue and its contents, in conjunction with service portfolio
• Interfacing with Business Relationship Management and Service Level Management to ensure that the information is aligned to the business and business process.

ITIL - Service Design Overview

Introduction

Service Design provides a blueprint for the services. It not only includes designing of new service but also devises changes and improvements to existing ones.

It also let the service provider know how the design capabilities for service management can be developed and acquired.

Balanced Design

It is necessary for services to be adaptable to changing business requirements on dynamic basis. For this a balance must be maintained between following three factors −

• Functionality with the required quality.
• Resources i.e. staff, technologies, and available finances.
• Timetable

Aspects of Service Design

Service Design focuses on the following aspects −

• IT Services designed to meet business objectives.
• Services designed to be both fit for purpose and fit for use.
• Cost of ownership planed to achieve return on investment.
• Balanced functionality, cost and performance.
• IT services more stable and more predictable.
• Potential risk mitigated, so the IT service is protected from security threats.
• Design technology architectures, management architectures, and system management tools.
• Design of the measurement systems, methods, and metrics for services, processes, architectures and underlying components.
• Design of the service solution including all agreed functional requirements, resources and capabilities.

Service Oriented Architecture

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) refers to developing independent usable services. SOA is defined by Organization for the Advancement of Information Structured (OASIS). SOA provides more flexibility through modularity.

Prerequisites for SOA approach

Here the prerequisites required for implementation of SOA approach −

• Definition of services
• Clarity regarding interfaces and dependencies between services
• The application of standards for the development and definition of services
• Use of broadly-based technologies and tools.

Service Design Processes

Following table describes several processes in Service Design −

Sr.No.	Process & Description
1	Design Coordination It deals with maintaining policies, guidelines, standards, budget for service design activity.
2	Service Catalogue Management This process is responsible for designing service catalogue containing service specific to the customer for which they are willing to pay.
3	Service Level Management The goal of this process is to ensure quality of the services meet provisioned quality agreement
4	Capacity Management Capacity Management ensures optimal and economic usage of existing resources and future capacity requirement planning.
5	Availability Management Availability Management ensures the operative services meet all agreed availability goals.
6	IT Service Continuity Management This process ensures continuity of IT services regardless of any disaster occurs.
7	Information Security Management This process ensures confidentiality, integrity, availability of data.
8	Supplier Management This process ensures supplier relationship & performance and also ensures management of right and relevant contracts with supplier.

ITIL - Financial Management

Financial Management deals with accounting, budgeting and charging activities for services. It determines all the costs of IT organization on the basis of direct and indirect costs. This process is used by all three types of service providers – internal, external or shared service providers.

Financial Manager is the process owner of this process.

Benefits of Financial Management

Here are some of the benefits of Financial Management −

• Enhanced decision making
• Speed of change
• Service portfolio management
• Operational control
• Value capture and creation

Key decisions for Financial Management

Cost centre, value centre or accounting centre?

It is important to decide that how funding will be replenished. Clarity around the operating model greatly contributes to understanding the requisite, visibility of service provisioning costs, and funding is a good test of the business’s confidence and perception of IT.

The IT financial cycle starts with funding applied to the resources that create output which is identified as value by the customer. This value in turn includes the funding cycle to begin again.

Chargeback − to charge or not to charge

A chargeback model provides added accountability and visibility. Charging should add value to the business.

Chargeback models vary based on simplicity of calculations and the ability for the business to understand them. Some sample chargeback model includes the following components −

Notional charges

This address whether a journal entry will be made to the corporate financial systems. Here we have two-book method in which one records costs in corporate financial systems while a second book is kept but not recorded.

This second book gives same information but reflects what would have happened if alternative method of recording had been used.

Tiered Subscription

It refers to varying levels of warranty and /or utility offered for a service, all of which have been priced, with appropriate chargeback model applied.

Metered usage

In this demand modeling is incorporated with utility computing capabilities to provide confidence in the capture of real-time usage.

Fixed or user cost

In this cost is divided by an agreed denominator such number of users.