White PapersMany businesses are looking for ways to demonstrate the value that IT makes to the bottom line. With an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework guiding the business practices, you can improve processes through simplifying, consolidating, and standardizing. Whether you start with configuration management, service management, change management, event management, or application management, you have business needs that correlate to those levels of service. You can build your business case by discovering which management tasks matter to your business the most.
ITIL and Business Service Management (BSM) have much in common. The ITIL principles help you make business connections to information technology, organizing these connections by category, such as service management. Applying BSM principles helps an IT organization go from reactive to proactive, as indicated by an assessment against a maturity model such as the Gartner IT Process Maturity Model. BSM ensures that your IT priorities align with business impact, enabling you to proactively address business requirements to lower costs, drive revenue, and mitigate risk.
VGFHGFYGGFYTFTFTFTTTFTTECHNICAL WHITEPAPER Infrastructure Foundation for Business Service ManagementAn ITIL ApproachUntitled DocumentUntitled DocumentTable of ContentsIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Overview of the business case for ITIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Self-monitoring and analysis using the enterprise maturity model . . . . . 4Surviving a PinkScan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Prioritizing ITIL efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Leveraging the infrastructure tools that are in place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Finding an integrated toolset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Gathering support at all levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Prioritizing revenue-generating implementations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Automating where it makes sense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Building on solid infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Batch and job processing with business impact across the enterprise . . 6Managing change and configuration needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Implementing a Service Desk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Building the Configuration Management Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Demonstrating the ITIL value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Helping you maintain advantage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Untitled DocumentPAGE > 4Introduction Many businesses are looking for ways to demonstrate the value that IT makes to the bottom line. With an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework guiding the business practices, you can improve processes through simplifying, consolidating, and standardizing. Whether you start with configuration management, service management, change management, event management, or application management, you have business needs that correlate to those levels of service. You can build your business case by discovering which management tasks matter to your business the most. To learn more about how IT can bring business value to a company, read the ITIL book from the Office of Government Commerce, The Business Perspective: The IS View on Delivering Services to the Business. ITIL and Business Service Management (BSM) have much in common. The ITIL principles help you make business connections to information technology, organizing these connections by category, such as service management. Applying BSM principles helps an IT organization go from reactive to proactive, as indicated by an assessment against a maturity model such as the Gartner IT Process Maturity Model. BSM ensures that your IT priorities align with business impact, enabling you to proactively address business requirements to lower costs, drive revenue, and mitigate risk. Forrester research states "By hitting all the stepping stones toward BSM, Forrester estimates that companies can save as much as a third of their IT operations budget. As 76% of the IT budget goes to operations, ?rms that implement BSM can potentially save 25% of their overall IT budget." This paper offers some broad ideas from others who have experienced different starting points when linking IT to their business, towards the goal of saving money. Overview of the business case for ITILBecause the ITIL framework helps you define the tasks that you need for compliance and regulation efforts, as well as align business needs to Information Technology (IT), it should be relatively straightforward to build a business case for implementing ITIL. This is especially true if your business relies heavily on IT. However, launching an ITIL project requires laying groundwork and collaborating across departments. You want a well-defined, documented project plan that includes dedication and commitment from management. You need to build your case using clearly documented goals and benefits that you can communicate to any level of the organization. You want demonstration of ITIL-based best practices that include ITIL-certified staff members who can do the work and communicate results. You want an integrated set of tools that can deliver on integration and ITIL compliance out-of-the-box.Self-monitoring and analysis using the enterprise maturity modelBMC Software can help with assessment of your enterprise maturity when it comes to integrating business processes with IT processes. Building a business case for ITIL includes an examination of the areas in which your business needs the most help. To uncover weaknesses, consider completing the Business Service Management Personalized Assessment survey available on www.bmc.com.The following are the IT maturity levels defined by the survey:After your organization completes a full self-examination, you might also want to use other methods of measurement. Testing and measuring using other methods can be conducted through an external auditor, such as Pink Elephant, an ITIL consulting company. Surviving a PinkScanPink Elephant can come to your company to assess and verify your organization's performance related to ITIL processes with an analysis method they call a "PinkScan." From this review, you get your Pink score and recommendations about the effectiveness and efficiency of your IT organization as it relates to other organizations and the business as a whole. Maturity levelDescription of organizationChaosNo standardized processes, predominantly ad hoc processes.ReactiveMultiple processes / procedures in place, relying on individuals' knowledge and experience. Standard documentation is limited to non-existent. ProactiveStandardized and documented procedures, generally unsophisticated. No method of ensuring compliance with processes, thus it is unlikely that deviations will de detected. ServiceProcesses are standardized, and compliance is managed. Automated tools are used in disjointed way. Value CreationProcesses have been elevated to best-practices levels; continuous improvement and benchmarking are in place. The IT organization supports rapid adaptation to business changes.Untitled DocumentPAGE > 5Some companies are finding that they do not score as high as expected because Pink Elephant looks at the organization as a whole, and looks for consistency across all areas. One department might be running smoothly with its processes, but if that department does not share information freely with other parts of the company, the efficiency cannot occur. If your IT operations department disconnects from the executives, that mismatch will be apparent after a PinkScan. Too much tool lock-in or "gear head" mentality also can lead to lower scores, indicating a lower maturity stage for your organization. After learning your placement on a maturity scale, you can direct and focus efforts in the areas that are most important to your business priorities. Pink Elephant also offers PinkVerify, a program that lets you check your vendor's efforts at ITIL compliance. BMC products are part of the PinkVerify program and our solutions have been certified by this program, giving you the confidence that you can start an ITIL project with the correct tools in place.Prioritizing ITIL effortsPriorities are important when planning ITIL-based projects. Not only must you consider what you have that is already installed and working well, but you must get support from executives and technical personnel. You also must prioritize projects based on business and revenue generators, not necessarily on your biggest technology pain points. Leveraging the infrastructure tools that are in placeYou probably already do all that you can to manage changes to your servers and desktops. When planning for ITIL efforts, ensure that you take advantage of the investments in existing tools and processes to give the needed information to affected business services. An example of an existing infrastructure tool includes BMC Performance Manager, monitoring and managing events that come in from critical servers. You can leverage those investments that you already have in place by making the integration connections with a phased approach. Any project that you want to support should contain methods to use the infrastructure tools that are already in place. Infrastructure is widely defined as something that crosses network management, application management, server management, and database management, so use the management tools that you already own when you prioritize the ITIL efforts.For example, you can use the automatic e-mail generation tool to log incidents when a server signals that its disk space is dangerously low. That procedure is a smart way of making the ITIL connections work with the technology you already own and use every day. BMC Remedy Help Desk has an Application Programming Interface (API) available to help with this type of incident integration. Finding an integrated toolsetIdeally, you can find ways to upgrade to and implement an integrated toolset, which is what BMC offers with the Remedy Service Management package that integrates with:> BMC Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB)> BMC Service Impact Manager> BMC CONTROL-M with BMC Batch Impact Manager> The BMC Performance Manager family of products> The MAINVIEW family of productsCertification from PinkVerify shows that, after evaluating the products in the BSM and ITIL space, customers found that BMC offers the best out-of-the-box ITIL experience.Gathering support at all levelsA high priority for any ITIL project must be obtaining executive support and buy-in at all levels of your organization. A lack of management commitment dooms your project from the beginning. Fortunately, many executives understand the value of the ITIL framework and have learned how compliance efforts intersect with ITIL principles. Also, many executives use and understand ITIL principles. You also must ensure that the implementers are on board with the project and truly see the value added to the organization's service level by incorporating business solutions with information services. Take great care not to instill concerns about jobs being eliminated as a direct result of efficiencies gained. Make sure your technical personnel understand that freeing their time for automation or CMDB efforts is also part of gaining efficiencies. For the management support, you can have your high-level executives in IT and IS departments lead the way. These managers should rally key people on each application support team and ensure that managers and directors from both the business unit and the IS side are heavily involved in planning, scoping, and prioritizing. If ITIL already has a negative connotation from prior bad starts, rename your project so that everyone recognizes the value of the ITIL principles and makes no connection to Untitled DocumentPAGE > 6previous bad projects. Of course, do not expect a new project name to cure the woes associated with poor past performance, but fully examine the negativity and ensure that restarting and renaming a project breathes new life and enthusiasm into it. Also, keep in mind that there are plenty of IT projects that can work in parallel with an ITIL effort, such as compliance, risk management, server restructuring, or infrastructure improvements. If your IT group identifies itself with the operations group, you can break down silos by acting as one team with the information technology groups. Also, break down the barrier between you and the business side by asking questions such as, "What applications do you plan to roll out this year that will have associated updates?" "Are those going to rollout updates three times, five times, or 10 times this year?" By asking these types of questions, you can schedule upgrades and application rollouts and make plans for the year ahead. Be sure to stay in touch with your user base. If they are happy with your level of service, they can bring information to you as well, helping you plan. Prioritizing revenue-generating implementationsPut your revenue generators first in line. This practice helps sell the concepts of ITIL to the executive and management staff and puts your business's priorities first, avoiding a vendor war, tool traps, or implementation roadblocks. By prioritizing the projects that primarily show monetary savings and fiscal responsibility, you are paving the road to increased opportunity in the future. Automating where it makes senseOften, people follow a process by rote, which means that you have not placed the process into a system that can retrieve the process for others to perform. This pitfall becomes apparent during interviews such as the ones that Pink Elephant associates hold during a PinkScan. Interviewing your IT staff yourself also may help uncover automation opportunities. Identify manual steps that you can automate. Be sure to automate only the processes that make sense for your business needs. As BMC Best Practices Director Ken Turbitt wisely says, Automating a bad process will simply get you into a greater mess, faster! Another point that both managers and technologists understand is that if you hire someone to fill a position, that position should remain valuable for a long time. Therefore, automation should enable you to run lean yet fill the necessary positions when the workload increases to the point that hiring is necessary. You do not want to increase the positions in certain roles, where an employee just sits in front of a monitoring screen waiting for an alert. Both the manager and the employee understand that any downtime costs money and they want their positions to have greater visibility to the business impact. They understand the value that each person brings not only to the department but also to the business. The business value lies in automating the tasks that make the most sense to automate.Building on solid infrastructureWith solid infrastructure and application management in place, such as BMC Performance Manager, you can monitor your servers and applications and raise alerts connected to your business priorities by simply integrating with existing technology. If you can automate the response to alerts by paging the necessary personnel or logging a help desk ticket, you have built an automation process on existing infrastructure monitoring tools. You may only need to re-think how you are using your existing tools to accomplish IT connections to business needs. Batch and job processing with business impact across the enterpriseAnother example of a potential opportunity to build on existing infrastructure management relates to batch job processing. With an enterprise-scheduling tool such as BMC CONTROL-M already in place, connecting it to a solution such as BMC Batch Impact Manager can show the effect on the business if a crucial batch job cannot run, or if a precursor batch job affects a business-critical batch job. This existing technology is the infrastructure upon which you can build for solid, proven technology that gets IT connected to business requirements. BMC CONTROL-M can submit, monitor, and manage jobs that are not strictly run in traditional batch mode, such as EJBs, Web services and message-based transaction triggers from queues such as JMS. This scope broadens your ability to ensure that the job submissions that come in daily meet the business' needs. A seemingly simple online transaction to buy a book, trade a stock, convert a foreign currency, or update client information often has a back-office job flow behind the scenes to interact with various legacy processes. These processes may have a finite time to complete. For instance, the price for a stock trade holds for a limited period, or an offer to exchange a foreign currency must complete within a limited time. Often, a dealer has to run through a risk analysis process before confirming a transaction. The new technology that you want for these types of time-sensitive, business-Untitled DocumentPAGE > 7oriented jobs is the BMC Batch Impact Manager tool, with which you map your service level agreements to jobs, outlining the impact to the business when an important job cannot run. With the BMC Batch Impact Manager, you can identify jobs that must finish on time, set job dependencies, set time limits by which the service must complete, determine which related events might cause delays, and define and track a critical batch service. BMC Batch Impact Manager is able to specify that certain processes must complete successfully within a finite period from the ordering of that process and provide warnings of failures to maintain the service levels specified. Couple these tasks with a job management foundation for the enterprise, and you easily can prove your business case throughout the organization. Managing change and configuration needsIncremental changes to all desktop or server environments can number in the tens of thousands, even topping 100,000 in a given time period. The scope and scale of those types of change numbers are intimidating to face, not to mention be responsible for. You can help your change and configuration management efforts by crossing over into other areas, such as managing all your assets in a central location. As an example, when you are updating a server to replace two processors with four processors, you want to be sure that you record that change. In addition, how do you know that change took place in the correct server and that the additional processing power is properly installed and adding value? With an asset discovery tool such as the BMC Discovery Suite, you automate the auditing and double-checking of that server and know that someone added those processors. The tools then give you a delta report, which answers several questions. Were the processors missing? Were they were put in the wrong box? Did your technician install the processor correctly so that the server recognizes it? While change management is the goal, asset management acts as the "auditor," helping to ensure that the change met the intended goals and notifying you when it does not. Implementing a Service DeskAs the ITIL book, Planning to Implement Service Management, states, "Many call centres and help desks naturally evolve into service desks to improve and extend overall service to the Customers and the business." In reading this statement, you may find that even the term "help desk" does not encompass all that your service desk could do for the business. Think about going that extra step; is your help desk an island on its own, not integrated with other business systems? Connect your help desk to monitoring systems or to service impact managers to show business impact when users or systems cannot run. You even can go that extra step and show how much monetary loss you can expect from down time. Create a service desk mentality for stakeholders to find the real value in a help desk. Tools such as BMC Remedy Service Management can generate help tickets based on alarms and alerts, automating the use of application management tools such as BMC Performance Manager. Most help tickets are generated by users, but imagine how much faster you can learn about failures if you hear it from your systems. Plus, you can remove some of the troubleshooting steps by getting a help ticket directly from a server on which disk space is filling up. This integration example shows just one area where BMC already realizes the ITIL integration you seek and ensures it works with minimal programming and customization. The following is an example of why you want to be sure that you know which machines are critical to your business' success, and not rely on users to write a help ticket for you. During the rollout for a very expensive new data entry application, the IT team found intermittent outages. Directly after the rollout, the resulting down time spanned nearly a day. By looking at the BMC Service Impact Management console, the team realized that the most important server was being powered down each night. Further investigation revealed that the computer was under a desk, and the person sitting at the desk rested his feet on this business-critical computer. Also, each night, a cleaning person turned it off. This "footrest" was a critical machine necessary for the whole application to perform adequately. Upon discovering this problem, the IT team quickly moved it to their data center. By monitoring the most important servers, setting rules for ticket generation, taking event feeds from an event manager, and putting the rules and events in a service model, you can tell the effects and importance faster than your users can. BMC Remedy Service Management also works directly with the CMDB, so the assets you track as Configuration Items (CIs) are integrated with no additional maintenance or coding on your part. Any changes to the CMDB are reflected in the BMC Service Impact Manager model. This redundancy means that if someone makes a change on a Sunday and a system goes down on a Monday, you know immediately where to start looking and how to prioritize that problem in relation to the rest of the business services.Untitled DocumentPAGE > 8Building the Configuration Management DatabaseFor ITIL efforts, some IT departments choose to focus on defining Configuration Items for a CMDB. BMC offers a complete CMDB solution as a feature of the Remedy Service Management suite. When you easily can retrieve reliable information about your CIs, you have access to information such as an inventory of software, hardware, a descriptive server build document, and so on. Some companies choose to think of the CMDB as not just one database, but many databases containing configuration item information. You can provide a document management system for related documentation such as policies and procedures. However, if you want a central location, you can federate the CMDB. Federation is a method to provide a single way to access data held in many different locations. Federation enables users of this data to search and act on it without needing to understand exactly where it resides. Data federation can help provide a consistent way to access cross-functional data. However, numerous ways exist to relate change request data to help desk data and then to detailed server data. Companies that recognize that their systems need to talk to each other will immediately understand the value of the CMDB. Figure 1 shows the ways that a CMDB unifies IT solutions and integrates ITIL practices from discovery to asset management.Figure 1BMC Atrium CMDB unifies IT solutions and integrates ITIL practicesAllocate time and different department resources to get buy-in for the types of information that you need to store for a CI and what your conventions are for naming and nomenclature patterns as well as notification and other related design items for the CMDB.For CIs, one approach is to define:> Names for hardware contained within the servers> Items to use a unique ID> Specific attributes with which everyone agrees (and will adhere)You also can decide to relate the CI to people who need to know about the asset's current state. You could use the defined nomenclature to define services for that CI:> Who is accountable for the CI's well-being?> Whom should your system contact when the CI has a failure or issue?> Whom should your system inform about the general status of the CI?This paper does not go deeper into the guidelines for building a CMDB, but these are the soft skills and points to bring to the planning and implementation meetings for a CMDB project. This paper also serves as a set of guidelines for preparing for CMDB planning meetings so you can anticipate concerns and suggestions.Untitled DocumentPAGE > 9Demonstrating the ITIL valueIn all projects, be sure you get greater visibility to the business impact to show how ITIL best practices truly help the bottom line. Your IT department should want to know the cost to business of down time. By mapping out your infrastructure with known service impacts, you can ensure your internal and external clients get the sense from your department that you know what the problem is and that you know how long the problem will take to fix. You might even want to try a small-scale prototype project first, using many of the tools that you already have in place. Having a service impact map lowers your maintenance costs because you know what to prioritize. In addition, you can see upgrade impact with interdependencies on other applications and ultimately on the business, positive or negative. Imagine handing over a report that shows how application upgrades positively increased the actual revenue for a quarter. Your management is more likely to approve requested project expenditures so you can save the company more money, and you will offer a service level that will impress all your clients.ISO complianceThe importance of standards and the assistance of best practices are becoming relevant in today's global business environment. The ISO 20000 will become the first global standard for IT service management, and is fully compatible and supportive of the ITIL framework. ISO 20000-2 is a "code of practice," and describes the best practices for service management within the scope of ISO20000-1, which is a standard that promotes integrated processes related to service management. The emergence of these standards can help you as a proof point for the validity of the ITIL approach to service management.Seeking operational excellenceMany ITIL precepts relate to quality control, documenting for repeatability, eliminating redundancy, and, above all, meeting financial targets and providing excellent service to customers. Your team probably has investigated ITIL practices as a way to prove that you seek excellence in all levels of service and in meeting both external and internal customer needs.Meeting service level agreementsUsing ITIL best practices also increases the perception of quality that your customers have about your company. You can be proactive and let customers know that there may be a disruption of service. IT historically has received a poor reputation because of missed deadlines, failed delivery, high costs, and more. Sometimes the problem is that expectations for performance are not set well in advance, making a mismatch between perception and expectation. With a consistent adherence to ITIL-compliant procedures, you can set expectations and set service levels that you know you can meet. Predictability goes a long way in building trust and assurance. ConclusionYou can fund ITIL projects and leverage the existing investment in infrastructure and application management tools by looking for connections and finding ways to automate. You can start with some self-examination and interviews to discover your maturity level as an IT organization and assess your progress toward the goal of creating business value as an IT organization.You may want to phase your approach by undertaking the items that offer the best business value. Be sure to communicate across departments for future planning and buy-in. You also may want to communicate up and down your chain of command. You can link to other areas of the business to plan for action over the course of a year or longer.By knowing your business and studying your processes, you can find new, innovative ways to connect your IT organization to the ITIL ideals. Your organization can reap the payoffs for demonstrating the value of adopting ITIL standards with ISO compliance, including an operation team that excels and service level reliability.Untitled DocumentHelping you maintain advantageBMC Software Education Services offers a strategic investment for your business, maximizing the value for your employees and Business Service Management initiatives. Education ensures successful product implementation, promoting mastery of all product capabilities and highest productivity with your BMC Software solutions. To explore our education offerings, visit our web page at http://www.bmc.com/bmceducation, or contact BMC Software Education Services by telephone or e-mail:> North AmericaTelephone: 800 574 4262E-mail: education@bmc.com> Asia PacificTelephone: +61 3 9657 4404E-mail: ap_education@bmc.com> Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)Telephone: 00800 26233822 E-mail: emea_education@bmc.comUntitled DocumentUntitled DocumentCopyright 2006 BMC Software, Inc., as an unpublished work. All rights reserved.BMC Software, the BMC Software logos, and all other BMC Software product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of BMC Software, Inc.All other trademarks belong to their respective companies.August 4, 200663973About BMC SoftwareBMC Software, Inc. [NYSE:BMC], is a leading provider of enterprise management solutions that empower companies to manage their IT infrastructure from a business perspective. Delivering Business Service Management, BMC Software solutions span enterprise systems, applications, databases, and service management. Founded in 1980, BMC Software has offices worldwide and posted fiscal 2006 revenues of more than 1.49 billion. For more information about BMC Software, visit www.bmc.com.
