Chapter 48
Technology Considerations

THE FOLLOWING ITIL INTERMEDIATE EXAM OBJECTIVES ARE DISCUSSED IN THIS CHAPTER:

  • ✓  How tools can be used to assist some or all of the activities of CSI
  • ✓  Holistic IT service management tools
  • ✓  Specialist tools for managing:
    • Systems and networks
    • Events
    • Automated incident and problem resolution
  • ✓  Performance management tools
  • ✓  Statistical analysis tools
  • ✓  Project and portfolio management tools
  • ✓  Financial management tools
  • ✓  Business intelligence/reporting tools

This chapter explores the technology and tools used to support CSI and how they would be implemented for CSI activities, such as performance, project, and portfolio management as well as service measurement and business intelligence reporting.

ITIL focuses on four areas—people, processes, products, and partners. In previous chapters, we examined the people and processes involved in CSI. Now we are going to look at the products. We have emphasized the importance of gathering and presenting data. The performance of IT services and service management processes needs to be monitored and reported. Modern service management tools can assist us in this, as can the other tools we will be looking at now.

Holistic IT Service Management Tools

IT systems have always supported the running of business processes; sophisticated tools are now available to help run IT itself. The range of tools available to assist in service management is vast. Some organizations use simple homegrown databases to manage incidents or changes. It is increasingly common for organizations to use dedicated, integrated toolsets designed to support the service management processes. These may even be marketed as ITIL conformant. It is important to remember that tools are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

We shall be looking at the following technology:

  • Systems management toolsets that can monitor and control systems and infrastructure components
  • Dedicated service management tools that manage process-based workflows, such as incident management
  • Tools to support IT governance requirements

Output from these tools needs to be combined, collated, and analyzed collectively to provide the overall business intelligence required to effectively improve on the overall IT service provision. These tools can be thought of under a number of broad categories. We will start with IT service management suites.

IT Service Management Suites

Although it is possible to manage an IT department and its processes using spreadsheets and homebuilt access databases, it has become more common in recent years to recognize that managing this complex and essential part of the business requires investment in specialized tools, just as other areas of a business have their specialist tools that enable them to do things like automate accounting or manage inventory or resource utilization. IT service management suites provide an integrated toolset, allowing information regarding incidents, problems, changes, configuration items, and SLAs, for example, to be stored together. There are a wide variety of IT service management tools available, often offered using the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Such tools can help support the implementation of ITIL processes; there are tools for just about every service management process, such as those supporting capacity and availability monitoring and automated event identification. The data provided by tools is a vital source for CSI. Capturing information, and linking the information together, is the major strength of these tools.

Tool Support for Incident/Problem Management

Data about the configuration items (CIs) involved can help in understanding the impact of incidents on affected services and thus help prioritize the incidents correctly. This information can also be used when designing incident models.

Having a tool that provides the ability to understand how changes are linked to CIs, which are then linked to incidents, which are in turn linked to problems, can provide us with possible root causes, show patterns of faults, and so on. This can be a very powerful aid to understanding what is going wrong and identifying possible improvement options.

Tool Support for Change

Toolsets that capture the CI data for changes, and provide a change schedule, help in identifying when changes have caused problems that led to incidents affecting the service. Modern tool capabilities include the ability to draw dynamic configuration relationships showing the changes, releases, incidents, and problems related to each CI. Tools can use the change schedule, projected service outage, and CMS and SLA data to automate risk assessment and reduce the workload of the change advisory board.

Tool Support for Service Asset and Configuration Management

Tools now offer extensive functionality in support of service asset and configuration management. Accurate CMS information is a critical data source for CSI.

Key tool functionality now available includes discovery and service dependency mapping capabilities, which offer a visual representation of the hierarchy and CI relationships. Tools often include auditing capabilities to streamline data verification and will allow different data sources or configuration management databases (CMDBs) to be federated into an overall CMS where appropriate.

Tool Support for Release

Tools are available to help in the release process by incorporating automatic software distribution and enforcing version numbering to control definitive software versions. They can often also automatically update CIs and track which CIs were updated.

Tool Support for Service Level Management

Tools can assist service level management by monitoring for breaches of thresholds for response to and resolution of incidents. This enables performance against service level agreements, operational agreements, and underpinning contracts to be monitored and the performance of internal and external suppliers to be tracked and reported. The tools will record response and fix times to enable service level reporting. ITSM toolsets can automate both hierarchical and functional escalation, speeding up resolution and reducing SLA breaches. Tools are also vital in supporting service reporting.

Tool Support for other Service Management Processes

ITSM tools can assist many service management processes:

  • Availability management. ITSM tools will help by monitoring and reporting downtime.
  • Service catalog management. ITSM tools will help by providing an online service catalog.
  • Request fulfilment. ITSM tools will help by providing automated request authorization and fulfilment workflows.
  • Release management. ITSM tools will help by automatically updating CMS data following a release.
  • Continual service improvement will be helped by the extensive reporting capabilities of ITSM tools and the capture of baselines and trends. Such tools make it possible to highlight incidents that result in problems, changes that cause incidents, and releases that encapsulate certain changes. They provide all of the associated performance metric data that will feed the overall CSI initiatives. The right tool, properly configured, can be an enormous benefit to continual service improvement.

Specialist Tools

In addition to the integrated service management tool suites we have discussed, many other tools are commonly used by IT service providers to manage services. The data gathered by these tools is a major input to continual service improvement.

System and Network Tools

Complex infrastructures require effective system and network management tools; monitoring and controlling hundreds or thousands of CIs, understanding their interdependencies, and reporting on their performance would be impossible otherwise. Tools designed to manage the different technologies used can generate events to be captured and interpreted to show how the technology is performing. These tools can also be regarded as service management tools because they show the level of service being delivered in real time (using dashboards), provide data for several processes, and highlight issues for action before the users have become aware, thus helping reduce downtime.

Data produced by these tools will highlight incidents and provide input to availability (showing the mean time between failures and mean time to restore service, for example) and capacity management (by producing utilization reports). Many of these tools also have the capability to support release management and service asset and configuration management through their ability to deploy software updates and update the CMS to show that this has been done.

Event Management Tools

ITIL defines an event as any detectable or discernible occurrence that has significance for the management of the IT infrastructure or the delivery of IT services. Events are produced by many different systems; they are detected and analyzed by event management tools. These tools can use the information to evaluate the potential impact such an occurrence may have on the services being provided. By monitoring the levels of service being provided and warning of deterioration, event management tools enable action to be taken immediately, often before the customer is aware of any issue. Their ability to correlate multiple events (such as notification of a loss of connection from every CI downstream of a failure) means that the true cause is identified quickly. Speeding up the response to any issues improves the overall quality of the service.

Automated Incident and Problem Resolution

Automation of routine tasks can enhance the level of service being delivered. Tools work consistently and without breaks, unlike human staff. By identifying that an issue has occurred, matching the symptoms to a database of causes and recommended actions, and then implementing the resolution, all in a few seconds, these tools drastically reduce the time to resolve incidents. All of these actions can take place in the time a user would wait for their call to be answered at the service desk! These tools also collect huge amounts of data regarding the type and frequency of faults for later analysis by problem management and CSI.

Performance Management Tools

Powerful performance management tools gather huge amounts of data from a variety of sources; without such tools, collecting this data would otherwise be very time consuming, and it would be difficult to maintain consistency in the type of data collected and the frequency of collection. By populating the availability management information system (AMIS) and capacity management information system (CMIS) databases with current performance and historical data, trends can be identified by support staff, who can then take the necessary action in advance of an issue arising. The level of demand can be captured and compared to what was expected, and actual performance can be measured against targets; this data is then used to fine-tune the system to deliver the optimum service. The effects of the load-balancing and tuning can be monitored and trends can be predicted. The data also enables possible solutions to be modeled to help decide which course of action will deliver the greatest improvement.

These performance management tools are useful to CSI because the fine-tuning activities may be part of an overall improvement plan and their success or otherwise can be proved by the supplied data.

Statistical Analysis Tools

The vast amount of data provided by the various tools we have looked at in this chapter can present a real challenge. Data relating to a particular service will exist across many tools and needs to be correlated to provide the true picture. Although these various tools have reporting and analysis capabilities, the capabilities may be limited, and the analysis will certainly be restricted to the data provided by each separate tool. When all the raw data is captured into a single repository and statistical analysis tools are employed, complex calculations can be carried out, providing valuable information regarding the following items:

  • The mean time to restore service
  • The mean time between failures
  • Service failure analysis
  • Demand management
  • Workload analysis
  • Service modeling
  • Application sizing

By using specialist analysis and reporting tools and analyzing data from several sources together, we are able to obtain real understanding of what is happening and the effect of any changes or improvement initiatives. Data can be grouped logically, and modeling can be used to predict future performance.

Project and Portfolio Management Tools

Specific tools are also available that can be used to assist with project and portfolio management. These tools are used to manage the business-related aspects of IT and can be used to support the management board approval process for strategic or major change projects. They support the registration, costing, resource management, portfolio visibility, and project management of new business functionality and the services and systems that underpin them.

They also help in assigning development tasks and provide useful data regarding resource utilization, changes, and release builds and provide financial management with information regarding the total cost of ownership.

Financial Management Tools

Many organizations spend millions of dollars on IT. The accounting and budgeting for this expenditure must align with the corporate financial processes and will require specialist financial management tools compatible with the business financial management tools.

Budgeting

IT management has the responsibility to ensure that sufficient financial resources are available to deliver the service, including provisions for contingencies. The budget must include day-to-day financial needs as well as longer-term strategic investments.

Accounting

IT must be able to justify its expenditure and show how this cost is outweighed by the business benefits that result. Understanding the total end-to-end cost of service provision is essential for input into business cases. All IT providers must budget and account for their expenditure.

Charging

Charging for IT services is optional; it will be a decision made by the business. If charging is to take place, financial management tools will enable the fair allocation of shared costs. When cost is calculated per CI, by usage, by resources used, or by any other method, the tools must interface with the service management tools that measure these elements. Data collectors gather the critical usage metrics for each of the technologies being measured, linking them to the costing information from the accounting software. The resulting information is used to allocate costs. To avoid disputes, it is essential that the charges can be justified and that the customers understand what they are being billed for. If queried, the IT service provider should be able to show how charges were calculated and the sources of the data that was used.

Business Intelligence/Reporting

The final area where tools can be beneficial that we consider here is the area of business intelligence and reporting. These tools can provide a common repository of all service information and business-related data (in addition to the technical data already discussed). The technology used to deliver IT services is increasingly complex, requiring powerful tools to administer, manage, improve, and ensure overall governance of IT service provision. Procuring the appropriate tools can reduce the administrative overhead of managing processes and improve the overall quality of IT service provision.

Summary

In this chapter, we looked at the technology required to support CSI. This included understanding the use of and value provided by tools. We considered specialist IT service management toolsets and tools used for system, network, and event management. We also looked at tools that provide automated incident and problem resolution and performance management capabilities. Finally, we examined statistical analysis tools, project and portfolio management tools, and those used for financial management for IT services and business intelligence and reporting.

In the next chapter, we will look at implementing continual service improvement.

Exam Essentials

Understand the role of tools in supporting continual service improvement. This includes how system and network tools show the level of availability being delivered and how event management tools and automated incident management tools can invoke a response to a failure, thus reducing downtime and improving the level of service being delivered while gathering useful data for analysis by CSI.

Explain the capabilities that service management tool suites provide and how they support CSI and why they are important. Understand the generic capabilities of integrated service management tool suites to gather and store information regarding incidents, problems, changes, configuration items, and SLAs. Understand the importance of this information being gathered together, such as identifying links between configuration items and problems, changes and incidents, and so forth.

Understand how specialist tools are used to support specific processes. Be able to identify how performance management tools improve the level of service being delivered and how statistical analysis tools help process the data into useful information and knowledge, thus showing what improvement actions are required. Understand the tools used to support project and program management, financial management, and business intelligence and reporting, and how the data gathered by these tools helps identify areas for improvement, the cost of failure and of the improvement plan, and the reporting of the effect any actions that were taken have on the business.

Review Questions

You can find the answers to the review questions in the appendix.

  1. Which of the following statements about tools is true?

    1. IT service management can be managed only by using an integrated toolset for all processes.
    2. A tool developed in-house will be preferable to a commercial tool.
    3. Software as a service is not appropriate for service management tools because every organization is different.
    4. Organizations will usually need to combine data from more than one tool to gain an overall view of performance.

  2. Which of the following statements about integrated ITSM tools is incorrect?

    1. Integrated tools should be considered because they allow linkages between incidents, problems, changes, and configuration items.
    2. It is preferable to use individual tools for each process in order to be able to have the best available tool for each process.
      1. 1 only
      2. 2 only
      3. Both
      4. Neither

  3. Which of the following is NOT a benefit of using automated tools?

    1. They work 24/7.
    2. They are faster than humans at identifying that an issue has occurred.
    3. They enforce adherence to the correct ITIL processes by the IT department staff.
    4. They can often be programmed to apply a resolution automatically.

  4. Specialist tools may assist CSI in data gathering and analysis and other tasks. Which of the following specialist tools might be used to assist CSI?

    1. System and network tools
    2. Event management tools
    3. Business process automation tools
    4. Automated incident and problem resolution tools
    5. Performance management tools
    6. Statistical analysis tools
    7. Customer relationship management tools
    8. Project and portfolio management tools
    9. Financial management tools
    10. Business intelligence/reporting tools
      1. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 10 only
      2. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10 only
      3. All of them
      4. 1, 2, 4, and 10 only

  5. Which of the following statements is true concerning the implementation of new tools?

    1. The tool should be set up to carry out all the requirements from the start so that later changes are not required.
    2. The tool should be intuitive, to cut training costs.
    3. The reporting requirements must be considered when configuring the tool.
    4. The tool should adhere strictly to ITIL guidelines.

  6. Which of the areas of service management known as the four Ps is mostly concerned with tools?

    1. People
    2. Processes
    3. Products
    4. Partners

  7. Which term is used to describe integrated service management toolsets?

    1. Centralized
    2. Business process engineering
    3. CRM
    4. Holistic

  8. Which of the following is NOT an example of how tools can assist continual service improvement?

    1. They can gather data that can be used as a baseline.
    2. They can cut down the effort required to analyze large amounts of data to detect trends.
    3. They can show linkages between incidents, CIs, changes, and so on.
    4. They can make a decision regarding the prioritization of potential improvements.

  9. Which of the following statements concerning potential problems when using a variety of tools is/are true?

    1. Each individual tool can produce only limited information.
    2. The tools may each use a different basis for measurement, leading to conflicting results.
      1. Both are true.
      2. Only the first statement is true.
      3. Only the second statement is true.
      4. Neither are true.

  10. Which of the following statements concerning the benefits of using tools is/are false?

    1. Tools can improve service by detecting failures and automatically restarting the failing item or rerouting to avoid it.
    2. Tools can help overcome the fact that an organization has poor processes.
    3. Tools can gather data continuously, unlike people.
    4. Tools can save staff time by automating routine tasks.
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