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technology vendors such as Cisco and Brocade provide highly sophisticated network switches that can be configured as networks in a box. These switches make it possible to virtualize a network to reduce or increase bandwidth. Suppose that you have an exceptionally large data warehouse that needs to be backed up. If you virtualize the network, this typically complicated process is simplified dramatically and made more efficient. In such a case, bandwidth can be increased to speed the task and decreased when the task is finished.
In the longer term, bandwidth is likely to be provisioned automatically, just as virtual servers are provisioned automatically.
Network management is about to become more complicated with the addition of unified communications. In the vast majority of companies, voice communications, videoconferencing, and other forms of collaboration are separate from IT systems. This situation is slowly changing, inevitably making network management more complex.
Voice over IP (VoIP) is in the ascendancy, and companies are gradually adopting it, although not always in highly integrated ways. Nevertheless, adoption of VoIP is a move in the direction of unified communications, in which e-mail, Short Message Service (SMS) messages, chat, voice communications, and all forms of collaboration become computer applications.
Managing Data Resources
Managing highly distributed data has emerged as one of the most important issues for service management. This task has always been complex because of the vast volume of data that has to be managed in most corporations. The problem is exacerbated when data is managed as a service across departments and across partners and suppliers.
We devote Chapter 14 to data management, so in the following list, we simply define the processes included in it, as illustrated in Figure 11-2 (refer to “Optimizing the Data Center,” earlier in this chapter). What has started to happen is that data itself has been packaged so that it can be transported with greater ease.
Data services and data fabric: These processes move data around the network to make it available to the applications or services that need it (particularly business intelligence services).
Storage management: This process manages data storage in all its forms.
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Database management: This process involves the specific tasks of managing database configuration and performance for critical applications and services.
Backup and recovery: This process involves the management of backup and recovery, including the management of all dependencies among systems.
The primary KPI that an organization will want to measure is the cost per gigabyte of data stored in various strata of availability, from online to archived and stored.
Managing the Software Environment
The processes that we group on the software-environment level in Figure 11-2 (refer to “Optimizing the Data Center,” earlier in this chapter) are covered elsewhere in this book, so we only introduce them here:
Application management: This process normally involves specific software designed to monitor the performance of a specific application. The activity could also be described as performance monitoring at the application level.
License management: The management of software licenses can be considered to be a separate activity or part of asset or supplier management. Either way, the primary KPI is expressed in terms of cost per user per application.
Configuration change management: In its broadest definition, software configuration management covers the management of software releases and the management of changes in all configurations, complete with an audit trail (who did what, when, and how).
IT security: IT security is a particularly complex activity, made more complex by the fact that currently, no security platform can be implemented to provide comprehensive IT security across a network.
With respect to optimization, the ultimate goal in the corporate environment is to use software efficiently in terms of resource consumption while delivering agreed-on service levels at both the business level and the application level.
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Managing the Service Management
Infrastructure
The final layer in Figure 11-2 (refer to “Optimizing the Data Center,” earlier in this chapter) is service management infrastructure, which we discuss in Chapter 9. In the following sections, we discuss two additional elements: cloud computing and service management reporting.
Cloud computing
A cloud is a computing model that makes IT resources such as servers, middleware, and applications available as a service to business organizations in a self-service manner. We include cloud computing in Figure 11-2 simply to indicate that workloads (or perhaps parts of workloads) may be run in the cloud. In fact, all the layers we discuss in this chapter could be augmented from the cloud. We expect that this approach will become necessary over time, as organizations migrate some of their applications to the cloud or sign up to run new applications from the cloud. For more information on cloud computing, take a look at Chapter 15.
Service management reporting
The idea of a central console initially grew out of the fact that in the old days of the mainframe, a single screen reported the progress of all workloads to the computer operator. That setup was impossible in large networks. Instead, several consoles aggregated information from various parts of the network. In addition, purpose-specific consoles reported on activities such as network management or IT security.
Integration infrastructure
A central service management reporting capability depends on a functional CMDB and integration infrastructure that support the gathering of data from multiple sources and the passing of messages among service management applications. Such a capability can exist even if only some level of integration is available.
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When this capability exists, it’s a relatively simple matter to add reporting software to provide specific reporting capabilities that give insight into the behavior of any part of the IT network. Such reporting capabilities can easily be added to the service catalog and made available to anyone in the data center as self-service options.
Understanding Strategy and Maturity
The general strategic direction for service management, as we describe in Chapter 6, is evolution from system management through service management. This journey enables organizations to move from managing systems to managing the application services that run on those systems. The next stage of the journey is moving business service management (BSM) where it enables IT to be aligned with the goals of the business. As its name implies, BSM manages business services.
In this chapter, we look at the data center from an optimization perspective, highlighting various KPIs and specific areas of data center activity where optimization can be applied. Most of the optimization we discuss is already carried out within the data center in some way, in many cases informally. The nature of these optimizations will not change dramatically as an organization moves closer toward the goal of direct BSM, but the optimizations will have to be reconciled with the optimization of business services. When BSM is reality, it governs all other optimizations. We discuss BSM in more detail in Chapter 17.
In Figure 6-2 in Chapter 6, we define maturity in terms of this progression:
Fragmented services Standardized services Integrated services
Optimized services
As with strategy, the optimizations we discuss in this chapter are likely to be carried out in some way irrespective of the level of maturity. All such optimization activity becomes more effective as the industry moves to integrated services. The holistic optimization of the data center is possible only when the service management environment is fully integrated.
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Chapter 12
Service Support and
the Service Desk
In This Chapter
Seeing what a service desk does
Understanding event management
Measuring service desk performance
One of the fundamental truths of service management is that when you do it well, the service management team is like the wizard behind the curtain in the Land of Oz. If your e-mail never goes down and your technical
equipment never fails, you don’t go looking behind the curtain to understand what went wrong.
The reality is that services do fail and errors do occur — and when they do, customers (or service users) need to have their questions answered and problems resolved. Whatever a problem is, it must be reported, diagnosed, evaluated, and fixed quickly.
This chapter defines the service desk, describes its parts, and explains its activity.
Watching the Service Desk in Action . . . or Inaction
For many businesses, the service desk is the first port of call in customer interactions. Imagine the lost productivity and revenue, and the all-around chaos, that would occur if companies didn’t have effective systems to manage IT service delivery and deal with problems effectively when they arose.