Using MOF for Service Manager Deployment - Microsoft uses MOF to describe IT operations and uses the System Center suite as a tool to put that framework into practice. However, products such as Service Manager 2010 are also applications and, as such, best deployed using a disciplined approach. Although the MOF Deliver Phase is geared toward application development, it can be adapted to support infrastructure solution design and deployment, as discussed in Chapter 5, “Designing Service Manager.”
It is important to note that the activities pictured in Figure 1.6 can occur simultaneously within an IT organization. Each area has a specific focus and tasks, and within each area are policies, procedures, standards, and best practices that support specific service management-focused tasks.
Service Manager 2010 can be employed to support tasks in the different top-level MOF components. Let’s look briefly at each of these areas and see how one can use Service Manager to support MOF:
Plan: This phase covers activities related to IT strategy, standards, policies, and finances. This is where the business and IT collaborate, to determine how IT can most effectively deliver services enabling the overall organization to succeed.
- Service Manager delivers services that support the business, enabling IT to change to meet business strategy and support the business in becoming more efficient.
. Deliver: This phase represents activities related to envisioning, planning, building, testing, and deploying IT service solutions. It takes a service solution from vision through deployment, ensuring you have a stable solution inline with business requirements and customer specifications.
- Using connectors, Service Manager can integrate information from other areas of System Center. The Configuration Manager connector integrates configuration item data about computers managed by Configuration Manager, while using the Operations Manager connector ensures that alerts reported by Operations Manager are tracked in Service Manager as incidents.
Operate: This phase focuses on activities related to operating, monitoring, supporting, and addressing issues with IT services. It ensures that IT services function in line with SLA targets.
Configuring incident SLAs in Service Manager provides a mechanism to set up customized reporting, notification, and escalation for incidents nearing an SLA breach. Service Manager also helps to ensure compliance and lower the risk of configuration errors with functionality that detects and remediates noncompliant configurations.
By implementing and automating trouble ticketing best practices, Service Manager provides the tools to streamline incident and problem management.
Manage: This layer, operating continuously though the three phases, covers activities related to managing governance, risk, compliance, changes, configurations, and organizations. It promotes consistency and accountability in planning and delivering IT services, providing the basis for developing and operating a flexible and durable IT environment.
The Manage layer establishes an approach to ITSM activities, which helps to coordinate the work of the SMFs in the three life cycle phases.
Service Manager can assist IT with governance, risk management, and compliance through implementation of the IT GRC Process management pack, discussed in Chapter 13, “IT Management: Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance.”
You can find additional information about the MOF at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=50015.