Applying ITIL Best Practices to Operations Centers 2014 NA SNO Colloquium
What is ITIL? Set of practices for IT Service Management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning services with the needs of business Describes processes, procedures, tasks and checklists that are not organizationspecific Used by an organization for establishing integration with their strategy, delivering value and maintaining a minimum level of competency Allows the organization to establish a baseline from which it can plan, implement and measure. Used to demonstrate compliance and to measure improvement. 2 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
5 Core Principles 3 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
Service Strategy Provides guidance on clarification and prioritization of service-provider investments in services. More generally, Service Strategy focuses on helping Organizations improve and develop over the long term. Set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of services Describes a provider s services in terms of business value Provides the business with the quantification, in financial terms, of the value of Services, the value of the assets underlying the provisioning of those services, and the qualification of operational forecasting Aims to understand, anticipate and influence customer demand for services Aims to maintain a positive relationship with customers, and identifies the needs of existing and potential customers to ensures that appropriate services are developed to meet those needs Service Strategy relies largely upon a market-driven approach. Key topics covered include service value definition, business-case development, service assets, market analysis and service provider types. 4 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
Service Design Coordinate all service design activities, processes and resources. Ensure that the capacity of services and infrastructure is able to deliver the agreed service level targets in a cost effective and timely manner Exhaustive list of services that an organization provides or offers to customers Manage risks that could seriously impact services Negotiate SLA with the customers and to design services in accordance with the agreed service level targets Ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of an organization's information, data and services Define, analyze, plan, measure and improve all aspects of the availability of services Ensure that all contracts with suppliers support the needs of the business, and that all suppliers meet their contractual commitments. 5 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
Service Transition Transition Planning and Support Release and Deployment Management Service Validation and Testing Change Evaluation 6 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
Change Management Process used for managing planned deployment or alterations to all Configuration Items (CI s) in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB). Part of a business's Live (Production) and Test (UAT) environments - generally ALL environments that are under the control of Operation Centers. Routine - A low-impact*, commonly performed change. Comprehensive - A higher impact* change with a more complex procedure. Emergency - A high impact* change, created in response to an urgent situation. *Think Impact = Risk CAB/eCAB = Change Advisory Board Emergency Change Advisory Board 7 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
Configuration Management db Hierarchic and networked relationships between CIs; by holding information on the relationships between CIs, Configuration Management tools facilitate the impact assessment of Changes Automatic identification of other affected CIs when any CI is the subject of an incident report/record, problem record, known error record or Changes Maintenance of a history of all CIs (both a historical record of the current version such as installation date, records of Changes, previous locations, etc. and of previous versions) The ability to show the hierarchy of relationships between parent CIs and child CIs. 8 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
CMDB Attribute examples Serial Number IOS OSS Vendor Support Contract Hard Drive (Size/Type) Memory (Size/Type) Applications Supported Business Priority Location GEO Fencing Heat Map Data Center / Colo Floor, Bay, Rack, Elevation Customer Info Technical Contact Hours of Operation Special Handling requirements Watch Groups Owner Support Group Status 9 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
Knowledge Management Process of capturing, developing, sharing, and effectively using organizational knowledge Core components include People Processes (Workflow, Troubleshooting steps, Escalation Points) Technology Structure (Tier I, II, III, Engineering, Architecture, etc.) Knowledge Management (KM) could better be seen as Ignorance Management due to the fact that it is impossible for someone to comprehend and understand everything in a complete way. The only real wisdom is in recognizing the limits and extent of one's knowledge and therefore, KM is essentially a matter of sharing the extent of one's ignorance with other people, and thus learning together. 10 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
Service Operation Request Fulfillment Identity Management 11 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
Event Management ITIL defines Event Management as an event that may indicate that something is not functioning correctly, leading to an incident being logged Command Center is over all Platform and Internal Application/Systems. Multi-Tenant CI s NNI, Muxed DS3, Backbone/Backhaul, Metro Fiber Rings, PSTN Trunks, etc. Core Routers, Class 4 & 5 Switching Fabric, SBC s Ticketing, Provisioning, Financial 12 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
Incident Management Aims to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimize the adverse effect on business operations. 'Normal service operation' is defined here as service operation within service-level agreement (SLA) limits. Individual customer issues are created as an Incident. Events have Incidents tied to them: i.e. Event of muxed DS3 down could impact 28 Customers = 28 Incidents 13 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
Problem Management Aims to resolve the root causes of incidents and thus to minimize the adverse impact of incidents and problems on business that are caused by errors within the infrastructure, and to prevent recurrence of incidents related to these errors. A 'problem' is the unknown underlying cause of one or more incidents, and a 'known error' is a problem that is successfully diagnosed and for which either a work-around or a permanent resolution has been identified. Post Mortem (PM) Root Cause Analysis (RCA) After Action Review (AAR) 14 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
Continual Service Improvement Must focus on increasing the efficiency, maximizing the effectiveness and optimizing the cost of services and the underlying ITSM processes. Improvement initiatives typically follow a seven-step process: Plan-Do-Check-Act (Deming) Inspect what you Expect Identify Strategy for Improvement Define What you will Measure Gather the Data Process the Data Analyze the Information and Data Present and Use the Information Implement Improvement 15 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
Getting Started. 16 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement
How does it work. Vendor Maintenance Notification received Change Request (CR) is created Configuration Item (CI) = Circuit ID CMDB knows relationship of Customers assigned to DS3 CRM Data leveraged for Customer notification Incident received Customer reports ASD CI here would be IAD & Customer Premise CMDB knows relationship so the CR would be appended to the CPE CI (IAD) Incident would reference CR 2 nd, 3 rd, etc reports received.. Event CI is Muxed DS3 Circuit ID & is Lowest/Closest Common Denominator KB (Knowledge Management) referenced for instructions for verifying port configuration and operation state Ticket opened with Vendor for repair Ticket closed to Vendor Outage Problem CR Step missing to validate port state at closure of CR Vendor Management Weekly/Monthly report would reflect Event for SLA Credit request if SLA rule(s) met/not met 17 Confidential Proprietary Information Subject to Non-Disclosure Agreement