Beleaguered software procurement professionals will
often turn to any kind of independent advice for assistance. In the
world of IT service management - or helpdesk as we used to call it
- that "helping hand" started in the 1980s when what is now called
theUK Office of Government Commerce (OGC)introduced theIT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)guidelines to deploying IT service management.
ITIL is the set of best practices that provides advice on how IT
should be managed, covering areas such as change and configuration
management. It is designed to help IT departments refine their
processes to make better use of both staff and technology.
Since their introduction, the ITIL documents have been extended
and refined so that ITIL is widely accepted as the world's leading
compilation of IT practice guidelines. An increasing number of
organisations rely on the ITIL framework to shape their IT service
and network management strategies.
IT managers can also apply these best practices and the tenets
of ITIL to their daily network operations. Consultants and
contractors with ITIL expertise, as well as organisations such as
the
IT Service Management Forum and Information Technology Process
Institute, say the benefits of ITIL include lower IT operating,
start-up and resource costs, and fewer network and system
errors.
Forrester Research estimates that 30% of companies worth £500m
or more are experimenting with ITIL, and about 13% have implemented
it. Suppliers such as BMC Software, Managed Objects,
Mercury Interactive, IBM and
Peregrine Systems incorporate parts of the ITIL foundation into
their service management products.
Indeed, it has spawned an entire industry of consultants and
certification companies, along with the marketing hype that goes
hand in hand with such success stories.
Respondents to a Forrester survey rated configuration management
as an area that is getting a lot of supplier attention for network
devices, operating systems and server software.
"What is most important is being able to describe a service in
meaningful terms to the user, discover all the elements needed to
deliver the service, measure service quality, and deal with
exceptions and breakdowns.
"Companies that have gone through the ITIL implementation
process see the most value in those processes that deal directly
with their customers' concerns, and network management is a key
part of enabling services," says Thomas Mendel, principal analyst
at Forrester.
A new route for version 3 of ITIL
Now in newly released version 3 (ITIL v3), ITIL appears to have
a more powerful presence than ever.
A key change to ITIL under version 3 has been a focus on the
alignment of IT and the business and on the management of IT
throughout the complete lifecycle.
So what originally started as a simple set of guidelines,
intended for a limited audience, has ended up as a worldwide source
of what is considered to be "best practice" when implementing IT
service management strategies and deploying products.
Other developments include new IT strategies, including
strategies for outsourcing and co-sourcing new concepts such as a
new service management knowledge base that helps transform captured
information into organisational intelligence new processes, such as
request fulfilment process expansion, such as event management new
practice areas and organisational structures and new methods of
delivering ITIL.
However, there are clearly defined limits to the practicalities
or otherwise of basing an entire IT service management software
strategy - from procurement to deployment - upon ITIL
guidelines.
For starters, an IT service management application cannot truly
be ITIL-compliant. There is no scientific A-Z list of product
pre-requisites, legal or otherwise, defined by any ITIL document
that can be tested against in order to verify it against those
requirements.
Even where an IT service management product appears to satisfy
what requirements ITIL can recommend, there is still the issue of
how that product works in practice - as regards interaction and
integration with different modules, performance and, not least,
flexibility.
ITIL and network management
I spoke at a seminar regarding ITIL's impact on network
management software procurement. It is clear that it now has a
significant impact on that selection process, however political -
rather than technical - that might be.
For example, Pink Elephant, an ITIL specialist consultancy
group, has an ITIL software "verification" process - Pink Verify -
which has become something of a starting point for network managers
looking to create a product shortlist, notably in the area of IT
service management.
The problem here is that this verification process does not
involve testing the software at all, but simply confirms that it
complies with all ITIL requirements. In practice the software might
not even work properly, let alone actually be any good or easy to
use.
This is pretty scary for two reasons. First, it means that
businesses might be spending huge amounts of money on poor quality
software. Second, it means that independent software suppliers only
have to develop according to a "checklist" in order to generate
software that receives an independent approval, regardless of
strength in depth and true innovation.
At Broadband Testing Labs this very issue has formed the basis
of our testing of two recent products in the IT service management
and change management areas respectively.
The ITIL guidelines preach the gospel of "best practice", but
what about "better practice" instead? In other words, rather than
simply producing software that meets the ITIL requirements, why not
go beyond these and offer additional features and functionality
that are of real use to the helpdesk and network management
communities?
Sostenuto, from Sunrise Software in the UK, provides a secure
A-Z lifecycle for any task or service request, with a series of
operations impacting upon that service request/task which may or
may not change the state at any point during that lifecycle.
Underlying business rules control what actually happens at each
point along the way, the workflow dictating just what the user
actually sees and does (managing their input and what screens they
see and use) while the underlying elements remain largely
transparent to them. In other words, it might be complicated below
the surface, but above - from the user's perspective - it is all
about simply driving a browser-based interface.
At a Gartner networking summit, David Willis, a vice-president
and distinguished analyst at Gartner, said that a key message that
was voiced was for users to "manage the policy, not the device" and
"to reduce configuration bother". You should not have to master the
minutiae of device types just to run your network better.
Willis said that the labour associated with managing networks
had seen little improvement, and that staff-to-device ratios had
not markedly improved over the past several years.
"Standardising equipment and normalising management are key
strategies for better network management," he said.
Flexibility is the key here for example, the business rules
engine allows anything to be mapped to anything else. This is IT
service management software going way beyond the basics that ITIL
dictates should be there, something not lost on users.
Adoption of ITIL and software
Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) is representative of the
banking sector in terms of its approach to ITIL and priorities for
choosing software to manage its IT processes. LBBW has implemented
Sostenuto as a tool to automate ITIL and improve its service.
The software provides the bank with the functionality it needs
to provide a visible change management process to satisfy audit
requirements.
With the heavily regulated environment LBBW operates in, making
the audit process as smooth as possible is a high business
priority, and ITIL supports this agenda.
"As an organisation we are growing constantly and the reason
Sostenuto works for us is that it can be continuously
re-configured to accommodate our changing requirements without the
need for re-coding," said James Clear, LBBW's head of IT.
"It fits our business requirements, enhances our usability of
change information and supports our audit responsibilities."
Flexibility is also fundamental to the set of business service
management products launched by UK start-up NewNetTechnologies,
which includes a change management application focused on network
device configuration change - the major cause of network outages -
and remote user automated support.
Again, in addition to ticking the ITIL boxes, the software can
be completely customised on a per user basis, so it goes way beyond
those guideline requirements.
This ITIL-plus approach is clearly necessary. IT service
management consultant and author Noel Bruton compiled a report
entitled "The ITIL experience: has it been worth it?" in which he
interviewed 120 companies with regards to ITIL. Two-thirds of those
using software to support ITIL adoption said that the software had
to be customised even when the software was aimed at the ITIL
market.
In other words, ITIL might be a starting point, but do not
expect it to guarantee delivery of a product that keeps your
network alive. Handle with care.