on CHANGE MANAGEMENT ABOUT THIS... 2 IT AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT... 3 RESPONDING TO PERFORMANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY DEMANDS...3 AN EMERGING NEED FOR CHANGE MANAGEMENT...3 DEFINING CHANGE MANAGEMENT... 4 WHAT IS CHANGE?...4 WHAT IS CHANGE MANAGEMENT?...4 THE BENEFITS OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT...4 THE FOUNDATION OF CHANGE MGMT: A CMDB... 5 WHAT IS A CMDB?...5 THE N(I)² COMPLETE VISIBILITY CMDB... 6 FROM THE HOLISTIC TO THE GRANULAR...6 DISCOVERABLE AND NON-DISCOVERABLE CI S...6 A DASHBOARD WITH MULTIPLE VIEWS...6 N(I)² CHANGE ENVIRONMENTS... 7 INTRODUCING N(I)² CHANGE MODELING...7 THE GOLDEN STATE CMDB...7 THE N(I)2 CHANGE ENVIRONMENT...7 AUDITING AN ENVIRONMENT...8 N(I)² COMPLETE CHANGE MANAGEMENT... 9 REACTIVE CHANGE...10 ACTIVE CHANGE...11 PROACTIVE CHANGE...12 CONCLUSION... 14
ABOUT THIS For IT, deploying a Change Management system and implementing change processes are part of the foundation for effective IT services delivery and management. This White Paper gives IT managers and business executives an overview of the business benefits of Change Management with insight into the technical concepts and processes that are needed to effectively manage change. The first section of this White Paper offers an overview of the challenges affecting IT operations today and a definition of change and Change Management. It also talks about where Change Management fits in the greater scheme of IT infrastructure management. The second part of the paper offers detailed information on how the N(i)² CMDB and Change Management applications manage change, with an explanation of N(i)² s unique approach to managing all types of change. Next, a complete overview of N(i)² s End-to-End Change Management Process with a look at notable features in our Change Management applications. The paper closes with technical specifications and business benefits demonstrating how the N(i)² CMDB and suite of applications can help your IT managers and business overcome the challenges of change. And finally, an overview of the N(i)2 Suite. Please feel free to contact us with further questions or a demo: www.ni2.com. 2
IT AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT Responding to Performance and Accountability demands Technology is ever-changing. It is its nature. An operation s ability to keep pace with the rate of change directly relates to its ability to innovate and respond to the competitive pressures of change. Increasingly, business executives are demanding end-to-end service delivery from IT operations, calling on IT services and delivery to become more efficient and performance-oriented. They are also calling for more accountability of IT spending, and pressuring IT managers to take cost management initiatives while improving operations. To respond to these demands, IT managers are becoming progressively interested in technology to measure and improve performance in planning, identification, problem management, and reporting to business executives. However, they are finding most solutions have been built in direct response to specific problems, such as measuring the efficiency of the Help Desk or storing basic information about an organization s infrastructure. Few effectively address overall IT infrastructure management. In a quest to streamline IT operations, Change Management is emerging as a key component in the spectrum of IT services management. And, to effectively manage change, an organization requires a precise and complete inventory of its infrastructure components. In increasingly complex IT environments, this can no longer be accomplished manually. An Emerging Need for Change Management The necessity for Change Management reached its critical point with the bursting of the IT bubble in the first years of the millennium. Corporate accountability became a number one priority for companies that depended on their IT operations. Management saw that for IT operations to respond to new and changing business processes, Change Management was mission-critical. But as IT managers started to develop their own internal processes, they discovered that the sheer volume of information they were trying to organize made their manual efforts ineffective. Today, the key factors that keep organizations from improving their Change Management processes include: Cost Control Costs, changes, and time not tracked and therefore difficult to account for. Business Continuity Inefficient and lengthy processing of IT decisions. Mission-critical systems are not prioritized. Change Control Failures to deploy new changes, or create back-out plans due to lacking assessment and review. 3
Defining Change Management What is Change? In the IT service business, change is anything that impacts IT infrastructure. For example, it can be a report that the email server is down or a software upgrade request. It can include switching to a new content management system or moving all an organization s operations to another building. Also, it encompasses the global changes that affect more than one segment of IT operations such as data center migration, desktop replacement or operating system upgrades. What is Change Management? Change Management is an organization s ability to take stock of its IT inventory and infrastructure, and to ensure standardized procedures for handling changes with minimum risk to IT infrastructure. The goal of Change Management is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient handling of all changes to minimize the impact of change-related incidents and to improve day-to-day operations. The main aims of Change Management are: Minimal disruption of services; Reduction in back-out activities; Economic utilization of resources involved in the change. Effective Change Management also means all relations and dependencies are known and accounted for, and processes are in place to streamline IT changes. The Benefits of Change Management Effective Change Management gives an IT service department the ability to: have a birds-eye view of the entire IT infrastructure; respond, manage and track requests for IT changes using standardized procedures; better assess the cost of proposed changes before they are incurred; have fewer changes that are aborted, or fail; increase productivity of key personnel through decreased urgent changes; absorb a large volume of changes. Change Management results in increased Quality of Service (QOS) and Quality of Experience (QOE). Change Management gives IT clients an enhanced business perception of IT because they receive professional, process-oriented delivery of service. To say that an organization is effectively managing change means that staff is not feeling the pains of IT change processes, executives can account for all IT costs, and IT staff is can report how changes will impact on the infrastructure from a business and technical point of view. It s about IT operations running smoothly. 4
THE FOUNDATION OF CHANGE MGMT: A CMDB In the world of IT, managing change without a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is like building a home without a foundation you might as well be constructing a house of cards. Gaining accurate representation of your IT environment gives your IT managers the ability to effectively plan and efficiently deploy changes. Gaining complete visibility over an infrastructure is a core challenge to assess and evaluate changes while following Change Management processes. What is a CMDB? The technological emergence of the CMDB has made it possible to put Change Management on the map. The implementation of a CMDB is at the core of an organization s ability to manage change. A CMDB stores details of the hardware, software, networks and other resources that an organization uses to manage and deliver its IT services. This includes services and people. These details are called configuration items (Ci s). A true CMDB also stores information on all Ci relationships and dependencies. With a robust CMDB, an organization can gain total control over its Change Management process. Knowing the details of each Ci provides a view on the impacts of change. It provides IT managers with the knowledge of WHAT is changing, WHERE it is, and WHO will be affected by it. Change Management ensures that all changes to Ci s are carried out in a controlled process by identifying all business and IT services that will be affected by the change including planning, authorization, testing, and reporting. Many of these processes can be automated with a robust CMDB and Change Management applications. Not all CMDB s are created equal Many solution providers today claim they have a CMDB, but when an IT staff starts to populate the database, they discover its limitations. Traditionally, CMDB s have been developed as a response to a specific IT service; but a true CMDB gives an organization the ability to view its infrastructure over many IT groups and networks. It should be equipped to provide IT managers a complete view of all of an organization s IT assets, including their relationships and dependencies. 5
The N(i)² COMPLETE VISIBILITY CMDB The N(i)² CMDB breaks down barriers between your organization s IT domains by making it easy to share data and determine how an event or a change will affect all IT infrastructure, people and services. The N(i)² CMDB is designed for the management of all types of change, no matter the scale, process, or complexity. With a flexible feature set that gives you complete visibility over your infrastructure, the CMDB works seamlessly with N(i)² Discovery, Modeling, and Change Management applications to facilitate change processes, and maintain the CMDB Golden State at all times. From the Holistic to the Granular The N(i)² CMDB supports any type of Ci (Configuration item). ALL elements of an infrastructure can be entered to the CMDB and given attributes. From hardware to IP addresses, from software to printers, all structural items can be visualized. All Ci dependences like cables and fibers are also modeled, providing the ability to identify, catalog, track, optimize, and manage Ci s. In addition, Ci s can be grouped, categorized, and registered on multiple levels. For example, a service device such as a router is made up of physical, logical and functional parts. A router is composed of cards, storage capacity, and processors. These have ports and partitions, and so on. Each level becomes a catalogued Ci in the N(i)² CMDB, ensuring complete visibility over an IT infrastructure. Discoverable and Non-Discoverable Ci s N(i)² provides automated discovery and mapping solutions to populate the CMDB. The N(i)² Discovery Engines can detect, map and store information about your network topology, applications, workstations, and connectivity relationships. Through automated discovery, a CMDB can be populated with discoverable Ci s. But not all Ci s are discoverable: N(i)² distinguishes itself by providing tools to model non-discoverable Ci s that cannot be detected using discovery tools. A service contract related to a workstation, or an electrical outlet and its capacity are examples of non-discoverable Ci s. Using generic meta-data, N(i)² gives IT managers the tools to fully map out a network topology and its dependencies. Assets like racks, power outlets, chassis, or buildings can be mapped and modeled to a CMDB. A Dashboard with Multiple Views The N(i)² Dashboard is an interface that provides your IT staff the ability to view Ci relationships in multiple contextual representations including connectivity, hierarchical spatial views, and containership perspectives. It visually provides a complete birds-eye view on infrastructure and impacts on business. N(i)2 OFFERS: compliance with corporate norms & policies; standards based on best practices; true impact analysis related to changes; an innovative approach to automate the change process. 6
N(i)² CHANGE ENVIRONMENTS Introducing N(i)² Change Modeling N(i)² offers the only CMDB on the market equipped with modeling capabilities. With advanced modeling tools, the N(i)² CMDB provides IT operations with the tools to manage What if? scenarios and truly assess impacts of change before implementing and registering them to the CMDB. The Golden State CMDB Once your CMDB is populated and configured to truly reflect your current IT infrastructure, it is in a Golden State. The information in the CMDB is a single source of truth from which to manage your infrastructure and manage change. The N(i)2 Change Environment Conversely, a Change Environment is a virtual workspace within the Golden State CMDB that allows a user to model changes using information from the Golden State CMDB. N(i)² Change Environments are highly flexible virtual workspaces with powerful modeling tools. They provide network design capabilities by extracting data from a company s current infrastructure, as stored in the CMDB. Change environments can help assess change impacts, generate reports, and streamline Change Management processes. Change environments do not affect the Golden State CMDB. Change Environments can be automatically generated from the CMDB to help you compare a wide spectrum of change scenarios. Using N(i)2 tools such as Discovery Engines and in-depth CMDB information, many kinds of environments are possible including: As Intended An environment for modeling a planned change like a new network of servers and how they will be positioned in an existing series of racks. As Imported An environment that displays new assets like a series of workstations- before they are registered on the CMDB. As Is An environment displaying your infrastructure s current state, even if it is different from the Golden State. 60% of system errors caused by unplanned change Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) estimates that 60% or more of all performance and availability errors alone are due to accidental configuration errors, caused by individuals within the organization. Change environments give change managers enormous insight and powerful analysis tools to predict how a change will be processed. 7
What s more, N(i)² provides users with tools to perform comparative analysis of any two environments, and generate visual representations and reports on the comparison. We call these comparisons Audits. Auditing an Environment The N(i)² auditing tools allow a user to compare two environments and generate reports on the benefits or pitfalls of either one. An audit can also provide a user with comparative charts and reports on all the tasks, costs, dependencies and risks associated with making a change. The Auditing capability allows you to validate modifications or change concerning: hardware and software costs; resources, software and licenses costs; human resource costs and time to implement; physical constraints (not enough racks on the chassis, or building is too small for departmental move); other assets or dependencies in your change scenario. The next section of this paper will further explain how N(i)² s robust total visibility CMDB and Change Environments give you superior control over all types of change. 8
N(i)² COMPLETE CHANGE MANAGEMENT When one looks further at the ongoing operations of an enterprise supported by IT service and delivery, it is evident that change occurs in many ways. Some changes need immediate response, some need in-depth planning and approval and others are IT service standard practice. For all types of change, N(i)² Change Management applications offer a comprehensive set of tools to facilitate end-to-end processes. Regardless of whether a change is initiated through a request, triggered by an event from a network or system management application or an IT initiative, the N(i)² Change Management system consolidates and handles changes from submission to final delivery. There are three types of change in IT: 1. Reactive Change Unplanned change that is discovered through a discovery process. 2. Active Change Changes that occur via a request and the change process lifecycle is managed on the CMDB. 3. Proactive Change Changes that are modeled and their impacts assessed via what if scenarios. All changes to your infrastructure can be defined as Reactive, Active or Proactive. This section of the White Paper discusses how N(i)2 facilitates all three. 9
A change that I didn t plan has occurred. 1 Reactive Change Unplanned change that is revealed through a discovery process Reactive changes are unplanned changes that may or may not impact on your overall infrastructure. During routine scans or through automated network scans, changes to Ci s are detected and flagged. When your staff is alerted to a change, they can accept it and register it to the CMDB, or refuse the change. If the change requires analysis, it s status becomes Active or Proactive. Examples of Reactive Change New software is installed on a desktop computer. A laptop is plugged into the network. A card is installed on a router. REACTIVE: A DIRTY WORD IN HIGH TECH? It doesn t have to be. Many IT management analysts talk about reactive change as a highly negative and undesirable type of change, as it is firefighting rather than planned change. N(i)² recognizes that reactive changes are bound to happen, and with an N(i)² CMDB, you can CONTROL reactive changes instead of fighting them. Reactive is not a dirty word if it is controlled. And firefighting, well that should be left to firefighters. To maintain a Golden State CMDB, IT staff need to react to these changes by registering them on the CMDB, rejecting them, or further evaluating why they occurred. The N(i)² Network Discovery Engine, combined with the CMDB s ability to store complete multi-level Ci information ensure that you can minimize the pains of Reactive change. Without a robust CMDB and discovery engine, unplanned changes such as an unplugged cable or faulty barcode printer could disrupt business and require hours of labour to manually discover and fix. Automating Reaction to Change with Business Rules N(i)² also gives you tools to set business rules for dismiss or immediate reconcile certain Detecting unplanned change The N(i)² Network Discovery Engine monitors your network and the CMDB for inconsistencies. It alerts your IT staff when a network card has been added or removed from a chassis, so your IT staff knows the state of the network at all times. 10
changes. For example, if the company virtual machine automatically kicks in during a surge of activity on the network, this change will not automatically be reconciled on the CMDB since it is temporary. With N(i)² s robust CMDB and Discovery processes, Reactive change is quickly detected and processes can be put in place to minimize disruption to your business. I am planning and implementing a change based on ITIL best practices, and then registering the change to the CMDB. 2 Active Change Active Change is change that occurs via a request and the CMDB manages the change process lifecycle. Active changes are driven by internal or external Requests for Change (RFC s) and performed using processes as defined by ITIL (The IT Infrastructure Library.) Examples of Active Change: An asset request, like a workstation, new software or removal of service. A service request like setting up a wireless laptop or configuring an email account. A network request like adding a new card on a device. None of these changes are sudden or unplanned, (as with a Reactive change) nor are they massive IT infrastructure undertakings (like moving 1,000 staff to a new building). They are active changes because they are recorded on the CMDB as each task in the release plan is performed. Change Assessment N(i)² offers robust tools for assessing and managing active changes. ITIL The IT Infrastructure Library Developed in the late 1980's, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has become the world-wide de facto standard in Service Management. Starting as a guide for UK government, the framework has proved to be useful to organizations in all sectors through its adoption by many Service Management companies as the basis for consultancy, education and software tools support. Today, ITIL is known and used worldwide. 11
Thanks to a consolidated view of the physical/logical/service/business infrastructure, N(i)² s information-rich CMDB gives a change manager detailed information to assess business impacts (costs, timeframe, etc.) and infrastructural feasibility (space, resources etc.) before implementing changes. Change Processes N(i)² Change Management software guides a user through the process of opening an RFC and following through on ITIL-based processes including analyzing impacts, gaining approval, creating a task list and assigning tasks. For example, a request for several new workstations means finding a space to put them. This is a task. Next, the task of choosing standard equipment. Then, financial and departmental approval. Next order and set up machines. Then register email addresses and so on. N(i)² helps a company streamlining these processes. With a detailed ITIL-based change process and release plan, managers and technicians are less likely to make errors and change is much more likely to roll out error-free. All tasks and task management are guided by N(i)² Change Management software. Logical, Standardized IT Processes The N(i)² Change Management application includes a complex set of engineering and business rules that can be configured by the customer to streamline logical IT processes. For example, the system will not permit a user to indicate that a server needs be installed in a card or that a piece of equipment is installed before it is ordered. I m going to make a change based on the ITIL change process, but first I m going to model the change and evaluate the risks associated with it in an advanced modeling environment. 3 Proactive Change Change that is modeled and its impact is assessed via What if? scenarios IT managers plan change on an ongoing basis. It may be time to upgrade the server, install a system upgrade or move the call center to a new building. Proactive changes may be driven by an RFC, or by an IT department or business-wide initiative. Unlike Active Change, Proactive change requires scenario modeling, assessment and testing to ensure the change will be smoothly rolled out. 12
Examples of Proactive Change: New Help Desk center. VLAN for the Financial Department. New series of backup servers. Company move: Moving 200 workstations from three buildings into one building. Data centre migration or consolidation. Proactive Change Is About Solutions BEFORE Problems Occur Proactive change follows ITIL processes, but expands on the assessment process with change modeling tools, offering greater capacity for successful change. It gives business s the tools for advanced assessment of a change with careful planning, risk assessment and modeling scenarios for smooth roll-out and reconciliation. Modeling Proactive Change with Change Environments As discussed in the previous section, N(i)² Change Environments give IT management staff the tools to completely map out new networks, infrastructures and connectivity scenarios. Supported with advanced Ci information from the CMDB, staff can completely ANALYSE and ASSESS how a change will affect an infrastructure upon implementation with no impact on your CMDB Golden State. Further, the N(i)² auditing capability (discussed in previous section) provides users with the tools to identify conflicts, and assess costs automatically. You can test dependencies and experiment with different sequences of action, all in a contained staging area. With this quality of high-level information, managers can confidently decide on a course of action that limits negative impact on the infrastructure. Automated Change Corrections and Release Plans Change Environment s are connected with the N(i)² CMDB, giving you an easy transition from design to deployment. When finalizing a design, N(i)² reconciles changes by displaying the managed environment and the change environment. A user controls what the change will encompass by accepting some or all changes, and rejecting others. Upon acceptance, changes automatically trigger a release plan, indicating the set of tasks required for implementing the change. Once the tasks have been performed, the system synchronizes the CMDB with the new changes leveraging standard operating procedures. Proactive Change is more likely to be rolled out successfully when it can be fully analyzed and assessed first. The N(i)² Advantage N(i)² is the only technology provider to give change managers modeling tools that are completely integrated with the CMDB. N(i)² differentiates itself for its provision of COMPLETE Change Management capability. 13
Conclusion IT operations that are feeling the pains of manually managing change should consider implementing an N(i)² CMDB platform and Change Management software. These powerful tools can empower a company s IT staff to better assess and review changes leading to a reduction in errors, better control over IT spending, and better quality of service. Businesses that are quickly expanding and responding to a greater volume of changes should consider infrastructure management tools to gain a birds-eye-view of what they have, where it is, who depends on it, and how to manage it. The N(i)² CMDB and Change Management software are designed for fast and easy deployment and is scaleable to a company s current needs. N(i)² does not develop a rip-and-replace solutions; the N(i)² Suite of software integrates seamlessly to existing IT service management software, and adds value to it. N(i)² makes it easy to analyze how changes affect IT infrastructure, people and services. N(i)² software facilitates communication between IT domains and helps manage the end-to-end change lifecycle using ITIL-based processes. N(i)² has engineered a tool for the management of all types of IT change. If your IT operations are seeking solutions to overcome the challenges of change, N(i)² invites you to contact us for more information about our technology and tools or to request a demo. www.ni2.com 14