In the first of this series of articles, I spoke about how all businesses want to save money, especially in this economic climate. I pointed out that most businesses now are heavily dependent on IT and the IT services they use. It is important to understand that the secret to a successful IT department is the effective use of processes and technology to support the business needs - not just technology alone. In order to achieve the goals of the business a balance between process and technology needs to be applied..
ITIL is a process framework, based on the practice of IT Service Management. The concept behind IT Service Management is that IT should be delivered to the business as a service. Businesses need to be able to carry out their own processes in order to deliver to the end customer, and IT should support these by enabling them. IT Service Management looks at a mix of people, processes, partners and technology. ITIL is not a magic bullet, but by adopting 5 simple stages, it is possible to improve the delivery of services to the business and make real and measurable savings in the overall IT budget.
Step 2 - once you have established the overall organisational strategy and IT strategy, it is time to make it a reality. This stage in the ITIL framework is that of Service Design. We all understand the benefits of good design in our daily lives. If you have a jug that dribbles when you pour from it, it is easy to identify that the design is wrong, and that the jug is not fit for purpose. This is an important concept for IT service provision. If the IT service does meet the needs and requirements for its use, then there will be considerable waste of resource in the re-design and re-development of the end service.
For an IT service to be cost effective, it must follow the guidance set down in the strategy, and meet the needs and demands of the organisation. One of the most critical elements for most businesses is the availability of the service. Designing for the required level of availability may be costly in this stage, but the benefit of having this right once the service is live and in production should easily justify the cost. In my previous article (Step 1) I used the example of an online business. Consider the impact of poor availability of service for an online vendor. The potential loss of existing or future customers, caused by an outage of the online systems. The more intangible, but equally harmful cost of lost reputation, as who wants to buy from an online business that cannot be accessed when you need it. Any of these could lead to significant loss in revenue, so the importance of good design in terms of meeting business availability requirements is critical to IT success.
But this is not the only aspect that needs to be considered at this stage. What is the expected demand for the service, and will it have sufficient capacity to be able manage that demand? Understanding the demand as defined through our strategy will enable the service to be created with the correct capability to cope with the volume of traffic and usage patterns that are expected. This may require further negotiation with the business to ensure that a reasonable usage policy is adopted to control potentially spiralling costs. Think of email storage - most organisations have a mailbox limit or the increasing volume of email would exceed the budget for storage space. Even with our improved technology, it is still important to manage capacity, and ensure that there is no waste. There is much discussion these days about Green IT - re-use and recycling of equipment and systems to minimise unnecessary spend, with the benefit of minimising the use of valuable resources in unnecessary manufacture.
Other factors such as security need to be addressed in the design of a service. How secure is it required to be, and how will this affect the usage of the service in the live or production environment. Recently my bank has introduced some new online banking security measures, which are so intrusive on my normal habits that I am considering moving away from them to a different supplier. I approve of the need for security in online banking, but they have gone too far for this particular customer to feel comfortable in using the service. It is no longer convenient to use the service, which is a major factor for providing an online banking system - convenience to its users.
An often neglected aspect of design is that of ensuring the service will be available even after a 'disaster' of some kind. Normal day-to-day availability is one thing, but what happens if there is a crisis or event which brings the normal environment down completely. Is the service critical to business survival? Can it continue to be delivered despite the circumstances? How quickly should it return after the event? How many people are likely to be using it? There are many questions to be answered in this field, and it is important to realise that this is a key driver for the organisation. It should be part of the overall strategy of the business and supported by IT, so that it is clearly understood what is to happen in a state of emergency.
All of these factors and more are considered in the Service Design stage of the ITIL framework. Good design saves time, effort and money in reducing the need for re-work. Common sense tells us it is easier to design something right first time, rather than have to add on improvements to meet basic functionality requirements later.
More details about how the ITIL Service Design guidance can help your business will be available in future articles, or you might choose to attend a training course to understand more about the ITIL framework. The best place to start is with an ITIL Foundation course.
In Step 3 I will be reviewing the next important money saving stage in the ITIL framework - Service Transition.
Source: ezinearticles.com