Information Technology Infrastructure Library - Term Paper Example

Information Technology Infrastructure Library due Executive Summary The library (ITIL) as it is known refers to a collection or guideline of practices for Information Technology service management with the sole objective of aligning the IT service and the needs of each specific organization. It is the modern most comprehensive IT service management tool for any business. ITIL v3 is the most recent version of ITIL succeeding ITIL v2 which has improvements on the previous ITIL v2 but where some features of ITIL v2 are not changed. Overall, ITIL v3 or 2011 edition includes five core publications which include design, operation, strategy, transition and Continual Service Improvement. All these are aimed at service delivery and eliminate the errors. The functions of ITIL can be broadly classified into four classes. These include service desk, application management, IT operations management and Technical management. Incident management deals with the preparedness of the system to deal with occurrences that emerge into the system with a potential threat of causing deterrence on the operation of the system. Its main goal is to ensure that normal operations of the business are restored immediately following such a setback. Continual Service Improvement (CSI) is one set defined in the ITIL volume which aims at ensuring that IT services comply with the ever changing business environment. It should be noted that ITIL could prove very expensive and almost inappropriate for non-commercial users who could benefit from such a system of IT service management. Information Technology Infrastructure Library Introduction The business world as we have it today has experienced changes in technological management and applications. The use of computer technology has become necessary in varying proportions. Consequently, computer technology has been a requisite for any business. However, the technology has come embodied with challenges and additional requirements. Companies have failed to understand to what extent they can use computer technology or information technology systems. Even in circumstances where the companies understand the scale of application of information technology they fail to understand which one is the best system to adopt. While investing in Information Technology Systems, companies should consider the costs of buying, installation and training that comes with the new technology. This should be after the company has established the suitability of the system to the company’s operations and compare the rate of return associated with the technology. In this light, the appropriate technology is one which, although not cheap to install, will give the employees and the management easy time to integrate adapt to while ensuring efficiency in business operations throughout. Therefore, methods that have been tested and which offer better efficient returns to the business enterprise are the most appropriate. This is because by venturing into untested information technology management systems will leave the business in a situation of uncertainty and thus hamper growth as most operations are undertaken cautiously. The most important understanding to a business management unit is therefore in optimizing the technology they employ to save on costs and maximize performance. It is based on this consideration that ITIL becomes an ideal system since it provides a platform of conveniently solving the business’ technological needs. Information Technology Infrastructure Library The library as it is known refers to a collection or guideline of practices for Information Technology service management with the sole objective of aligning the IT service and the needs of each specific organization. ITIL is the modern most comprehensive IT service management tool that has undergone evolution over the years to be able to include any business management scenario. Currently it exists in the latest form of ITILv3 and 2011 edition and is published and presented in a series of five cores of which each core covers a System management lifecycle stage. ITIL meets the requirements for the standards for IT service management as set out by the ISMS. Andriole (2008) explains that the uniqueness or the main advantage of ITIL is that it provides procedures that can be applied on any organization without any difficulty. Therefore independent, unrelated and unique organizations can apply ITIL procedures to plan, implement and check their operations for compliance and standard effective without having to adjust the procedure. In this one package, the company can be able to measure improvement and therefore ascertain its position in terms of progress (profits and losses). Development of ITIL It should be recognized that with the necessity for IT services and the exponential growth in IT in the world but most specifically in the UK, various organizations and government agencies were developing their own independent IT management services (Andriole, 2005). This was witnessed ion the period from 1980 to 1990. To harmonize the varying and independent systems especially government agencies, it was necessary to develop a comprehensive system hence the emergence of ITIL. The original form of ITIL system was actually a library of books, where each book covered a specific concept in the field of IT management. The books were organised in a cycle aimed at making it easy for accessing the IT data in the organization. The books increased to more than 30 making it hard to access the information as originally envisaged. The volumes of books were then consolidated into logical sets which reduced them to 8 as in the ITILv2 by the year 2001 and this made it more accessible. In this format, related IT management process guidelines were grouped together. A notable one in this category that was mostly used is the Service management sets of Service Support or Service Delivery. Further efforts to improve the ITIL continued with the OGC deciding to withdraw the v2 certification which was accomplished in 2011 and thus the current version is referred to as ITILv3 or 2011 version and now owned by HM Government of the UK and not OGC. ITIL v3 This is the latest version of ITIL succeeding ITIL v2 which has improvements on the previous ITIL v2 but where some features of ITIL v2 are not changed. It is therefore an extension of ITIL v2 adopted after the Government’s regulation on the withdrawal from the previous version. ITIL v3 is more comprehensive than ITIL v2 since it covers the whole life cycle of services in the entire IT requirements of an organization and all the supporting components that the organization and the processes need to deliver quality service to the customer. Overall, ITIL v3 or 2011 edition includes 5 core publications which include strategy, design, transition, operation and Continual Service Improvement. All these are aimed at service delivery and eliminate the errors. Service Strategy This is the core point of ITIL service cycle and will provide the organization with guidance on the mechanism for prioritization of the service providers at their exposure in terms of investment. Service strategy is important in helping IT organizations to develop especially in the long term. The IT organization is guiding on the key market concerns covering value, business development, assets, market analysis and types of service providers (Axson, 2007). This information goes along way in helping IT organizations to plan their operations towards ensuring stability and provision of quality and well structured services to their customers. The service strategy is outlined into several processes such as Strategy management, Financial Management, Service Portfolio management and Business relationship management. Financial management The financial management package of ITIL is the discipline that ensures the infrastructure for IT management obtained by the organization is cost effective in terms of acquisition, installation and training to the organization’s personnel. This is to aid the organization in understanding the cost of the IT services it employs. This aspect is necessary to the company when determining profits as such IT costs can be recovered from the customer service. Service Design This volume, abbreviated as SD, gives a detailed and accurate guidance in the design process of IT services and all the other processes towards ensuring quality IT service management. It Service Design ensures an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of technology service delivery. All elements are included since they are relevant. The service design therefore entails how the planned service structure will interact with the larger business as well as its technical environment, the management systems and the processes in the IT service provision as well as the entire architectural requirement. The design work and processes are consolidated into a service design package and are managed within the catalogues together with any related information. The service design package covers 8 processes namely: design coordination, service catalogue, service level management, availability management, capacity management, ITSCM, ISMS and Supplier management. Service level management This is the premise or framework which provides the mechanism for continual indentification and monitoring of the IT services in the organization as specified in the Service-level agreements (Andriole, 2008). It merges the internal IT services providers with the external suppliers by ensuring arrangements are put in place and that they do not conflict through binding contracts. The core duty of this process therefore is that it is the centre for defining the goals in terms of numbers and setting the benchmark for monitoring them. This is the basing of interaction with the customer and not the user whose needs are provided by the service desk. As such, service level management ensures that IT services are t5imely delivered to where they are required. It also ensures that quality is achieved in the other processes. Availability management This process under service design deals with ensuring that the organization can sustain the availability of the IT service they are providing at a cost which is acceptable to the entire organization. The need and use of the IT service should be able to offset the costs it comes with thus the necessity of this process. This process will therefore entail specific details as determining availability requirements, the availability plan for the IT service and check on the maintenance requirements for the service. Its benchmark is whether the IT service gets to perform at a given level of expectation over a given period of time. Availability management thus entails aspects such as reliability, maintainability, serviceability, resilience and security of the particular IT system design. Capacity management This process aims at the balance between the It resources and the business demands of an organization to ensure the optimum operation of IT services of an organization at more cost effective level. The activities undertaken in ITIL capacity management include application sizing, workload management, demand management, service modeling, capacity planning, resource management and performance management. The process of capacity management focuses on strategic capacity which includes personnel capacity, system capacity and component capacity. IT service continuity management This process ensures that organizations put plans in place such that It services that they need or provide are always available. This is in view that at times the services crumble but through this mechanism, they should be able to recover and continue after such collapses. ITSCM ensures that the risk of the disaster is reduced through proactive measures so that the organization is not called to action due to the disaster occurring. It is therefore considered as the recovery of infrastructure that is used to deliver IT services. It further involves the business continuity plans that will ensure that the whole business processes, from the start to the end, continue even if a serious incident occurs anywhere in the course of the process. The steps in ITSCM include prioritizing activities for recovery, risk assessment, evaluating available options of recovery, having in place a contingency framework and the testing, reviewing and revising of the adopted plan regularly to ensure its effectiveness. Information security management system This process in service design outlines the structured process of establishing information security in the organization’s management system. This is governed by the ISMS (Information Security management system) code of practice. According to Laplante & Costello (2006), the main goal of information management is to ensure security of information at different levels of access. Information security management system will ensure adequate security to the organizational information. The information related to employees and assets are protected thus maintaining their usefulness to the organization. With the security of information maintained, it can be ascertained that such information is authentic, credible and reliable. The organization thus will show accountability in its operations. This feature can be achieved through ITIL v3 but was missing in ITIL v2. Service transition This is included in the ITIL service transition volume and relates to service delivery as required in business operation on a continuous basis. It deals with the project side of the business though it may sometimes include business as usual environment by managing the changes witnessed in such environments. The processes under this volume of ITIL entails transition planning and support, change management, service assets and configuration management, release and deployment management, service validation and testing among others. Change management The process of change management ensures that set standardized methods and well defined procedures are used to handle any changes occurring in the IT process of the organization. The system should be able to fix the changes with minimum or no risk to the It infrastructure of the organization. Therefore, change management ensures minimal disruption of services, reduced back-out activities and economic utilisation of resources involved in managing such changes. Service asset and configuration management This process mainly entail functions that ensure the availability of information on Configuration Items which are considered as the assets required to provide IT services and how the items relate. This process therefore will ensure that configuration information can be adequately traced from the beginning to the end of processes. Release and deployment management The Government through ITIL service management process can ensure quality and genuine software and hardware in the market. This is done through the process of release-deployment management where the software migration team establishes the platform distribution of software and hardware. This can be independent or automated. Through this, control is put on the manufacture and release of software by licensing. This ensures only genuine and compatible software is available for use. Service Operation This is provided in the ITIL volume and is channeled towards ensuring quality practice in IT service delivery to the customers as well as the end users. Out the other ITIL volumes, Service Operation is the only one where service is actually delivered. This volume also ensures a balance between the quality of service in relating to reliability and costs. The functions under Service Operation can be summarized to encompass technical management, operations management, application and service desk. Further considered under Service Operation are the responsibilities of the staff engaged in the IT management process. Functions of ITIL The functions of ITIL can be broadly into four classes. These include service desk, application management, incident management, problem management and identity management also referred to as access and identity management. It is based on these classifications that ITIL is more superior to other methods of IT management making it to become most appropriate and applicable to a wide range of businesses. Service desk This is usually associated with service operation stage. Its primary functions include incident control, communication and support. It handles requests and so provides a bridge for other processes. Its significant features that make it effective include the single point of contact, entry, exit and streamlined communication channel which comprehensively ensure integrity for the data. Application management Application management includes all set of best practices that are set in place to improve or ensure quality of IT software through out the development process. It also defines software requirements that will satisfy the business needs through extensive gathering of information for every specific business line. Other functions of ITIL include IT operations management and Technical management which deal with the operations and the technical aspects such as maintenance of the IT structure to ensure quality continued service delivery. Incident management This aspect deals with the preparedness of the system to deal with occurrences that emerge into the system with a potential threat of causing deterrence on the operation of the system. Its main goal is to ensure that normal operations of the business are restored immediately following such a setback (Pride, Hughes & Kapoor, 2012). As such, the quality of service as well as their availability is maintained at the required level as the business demands. Risks as considered in ITIL v3 refers to the unplanned interruption that may occur to an It service whether in quality or availability. Incident management needs not to be confused with request fulfillment which is actually satisfying a minor system demand which is due to design of the system since these are always expected such as password request. Continual Service Improvement (CSI) This is one of the sets defined in the ITIL volume which aims at ensuring that IT services comply with the ever changing business environment. It concentrates on the business perspective of the IT services provided by the infrastructure. It defines the controls and all the parameters to be measured. Service support It is also important to consider the consumer of the IT services that is provided. Therefore the processes of IT service management must be one that considers the users. ITIL focuses on the users through service support by ensuring that the users are able to access the appropriate and desired service in a more efficient manner. The needs of the users define the changes the can be effected through the continual service improvement mechanism to ensure the business remains relevant. ICT infrastructure management McKie (2001) explains that in ITIL, we must understand that the main goal is Information and Communication management. ICT management ensures best practices for such management through design and planning, deployment, operations and ensuring continuous technical support. Demerits or shortcomings of ITIL Though considered the most appropriate of the available IT management systems, it has met a lot of criticism from various spheres regarding its usage and cost. It should be noted that ITIL could prove very expensive and almost inappropriate for non-commercial users who could benefit from such a system of IT service management. As a specific management system on a specific platform, ITIL will require specific or specialized training which can be tedious and expensive to undertake making it difficult to implement. Unfortunately, ITIL is not aligned to the other frequently and readily available frameworks like IBM. References Andriole, S. J. (2005). The 2nd digital revolution. Hershey, Pa.: IRM Press. Andriole, S.J., (2008). Best practices in business technology management. Boca Raton, FL: Taylor & Francis Group. LLC. ISBN: 142006332 Axson, D. A. (2007). Best practices in business performance management: from data to decisions (2nd ed.). Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Laplante, P. A., & Costello, T. (2006). CIO wisdom II: more best practices. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall PTR. McKie, S. (2001). E-business best practices leveraging technology for business advantage. New York: Wiley. Pride, W. M., Hughes, R. J., & Kapoor, J. R. (2012). Business (11th ed.). Mason, OH: South- Western Cengage Learning. Read More