An out-of-the-box solution provides a starting point, but successful ITSM solution implementation is achieved by customizing solutions to match the applicable enterprise practices
Axelos defines IT Service Management (ITSM) as the implementation and management of quality IT services that meet the needs of the business. IT service management is performed by IT service providers through an appropriate mix of people, process and information technology. A widely adopted framework for ITSM is IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).
ITIL refers to a set of best-practice publications for IT service management. Owned by the U.K. Cabinet Office, ITIL gives guidance on the provision of quality IT services and the processes, functions and other capabilities needed to support them. The ITIL framework is based on a service lifecycle and consists of five lifecycle stages (service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation and continual service improvement), each of which has its own supporting publication.
There is also a set of complementary ITIL publications that provide guidance specific to industry sectors, organization types, operating models and technology architectures.
ITSM Implementation
Gone are the days when IT operations had to install hardware for development, QA and production to implement IT or business solutions. The cloud offers a revamped and cost-effective way to roll out software solutions, and ITSM implementation is one of the beneficiaries. ITIL is just one of the additional frameworks that is worth looking at, depending on your goals. It includes COBIT, Agile, DevOps and Lean. However, ITIL framework implementation has been at all-time high, with vendors such as BMC, LANDesk and Service Now revamping their offerings to be purely SaaS-based cloud solutions.
ITSM modules implemented
Even though an out-of-the box solution provides a starting point, successful ITSM solution implementation is achieved by customizing the solution to match the applicable enterprise practices. The most implemented ITSM modules from most vendors include incident management, service catalogue, change management, problem management, knowledge management and self-service with the major goal being to improve processes pertaining to IT service delivery to better serve the business.
Some of the key benefits achieved by maturity of these processes include:
- Eliminating double effort on IT service delivery
- Better manning projects to ensure delivery is under budget and on time
- Consistently communicating and tracking critical success factors
- Consistently tracking metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
- Aligning service desk (help desk) service to business needs and making it more proactive
It’s worth noting that several vendors offer ITIL-aligned ITSM solutions to fit any budget with almost similar simplicity in workflow for a successfully service delivery. The differentiators may include integrations with other systems for monitoring, service mapping and most important, configuration management database (CMDB)!!
Why not CMDB?
Is CMDB the most challenging ITSM module to implement? Yes, no, maybe and we don’t need to implement it. The answer varies depending on one’s experience and planning. For any service delivery with a clear goal to deliver accurate configuration item (CI) relationships within any environment that will provide the right information, to the right person, at the right moment, a service-aware CMDB solution becomes the standard.
The idea of manually building relationships to be able to map your IT environment from business application, servers, storage, database, network, business owner and—equally important—the IT support group is just not scalable. Hence an accurate CMDB implementation with some level of intelligence and automation is a requirement.
When considering any ITSM solution, based on your level of maturity, it helps to check the potential of having a fully functional CMDB with the option of mapping your services as part of your phased implementation. The advantage of having this long-term plan is to ensure the solution you pick has the needed capability to eliminate the potential of having to start vendor evaluation when ITSM maturity requires implementation of CMDB and service mapping. ITIL implementation planning focuses on process improvement and the use of the framework as a guidance that brings about a change in people, process and technology once implemented.
With the many SaaS-based ITSM solutions offerings, and the complexity of IT services offered to the business across many industries, planning becomes key to ensure a successfully CMDB implementation to be leveraged for mapping business services with the right ITSM tool.
