Mind the Gap-Leveraging the Service Desk and IT

Operations for Improved Business Service Delivery

Contents
lntroduction ..................................................................................................................... 1
Why Has Progress Been So Slow? ............................................................................... 1
Real-time Operations Focus .................................................................................... 2
Service Desk Focus .................................................................................................. 2
Poor Integration Doesn't Help ................................................................................. 3
Finding a Solution .......................................................................................................... 3
Bridging the Gap with Tools .................................................................................... 4
Bridging the Gap with People .................................................................................. 5
Calculating the Benefits of a Closed Gap System ...................................................... 5
Effective IT Operations ............................................................................................. 6
Coordinated Service Management .......................................................................... 6
Increased Service Availability .................................................................................. 7
What Next? ...................................................................................................................... 7
Evolving to Business Service Management.. ......................................................... 7
Define Service Goals ................................................................................................ 9
Establish A Service Management Process ............................................................. 9
Link Infrastructure Management ........................................................................... 10
Measure Performance And Analyze Events ......................................................... 12
Introduction
Mature IT operations and service desk professionals have long understood the need to
integrate their change management processes in with their incident management and prob-
lem management processes to achieve maximum effectiveness. For example, if a customer
calls an airline to change a ticket, their itinerary, flight status, and current flight operations
data is all available to the ticket agent. If an IT technician queries the service desk about an
outage, the event message, trouble ticket number and other event facts are available, so
why not maintenance schedules, device locations, IP addresses, related applications and
databases, or upgrade tasks? Why aren't CI Os dealing with the complexity oflT manage-
ment data in the same way that airlines deal with the complexity of flight data?
For over a decade, IT organizations have been making attempts to integrate their real-time
IT operations' and the service management' teams. The results have provided limited con-
trol through the logging and integrating of real-time event data with user-driven service
desk data. This at least provides a single point of reference for IT management to under-
stand the issues across both the technology and user base, but the gap between IT opera-
tions and service management still remains large. Only a few innovations beyond trouble
ticket integration have emerged to bridge this divide.
This document explores this challenge in-depth, provides examples of how successful
integration between the real-time operations and service management can reap excellent
IT service management rewards, and presents BMC Software solutions that can tool your
environment to overcome this challenge.
Why Has Progress Been So Slow?
The biggest hurdle preventing synergy between real-time operations and service manage-
ment is the organizational gap that is created by companies with disparate IT operations
and service management teams. This gap is derived of superficial barriers that prevent
these disciplines from working closely together to forge a common set of workflow pro-
cesses and a well-defined integrated management tool infrastructure.
The need to integrate both environments is understood. The effort, focus and actual capa-
bility to achieve this goal is not. If a company continues to foster an organizational gap
between the two teams there will be no or limited growth in understanding how the two
groups can work together to deliver successful business services.
1.Also known as availability management and event management.
2.Also known as service desk, help desk and problem management.
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Without a level playing field where people can address process workflows between the
two venues, the ability to implement and benefit from software that integrates the two
technology groups is unlikely to be successful and provide measurable returns. In cases
where companies have integrated operations and service management products but not
their people or their processes, they have inadvertently created additional issues and a deg-
radation of service to the end-user.
Additional reasons for the lack of synergistic progress between real-time operations and
service management include:
Poor understanding of what data needs to flow between the event management and ser-
vice management environments and products
Limited out-of-the-box integration between event management and service manage-
ment products
Lack of an IT management focus to make and drive the decision to integrate both the
real-time operations and service management teams
Lack of understanding and appreciation between real-time operations and service man-
agement personnel of each other's functional areas
Software vendors in both the IT management and service management market creating
confusion by claiming they, alone, can provide business alignment and service level
management from their products without needed information from other products
Real-time Operations Focus
To date, operations personnel have focused their time providing reactive support to the IT
infrastructure using event managers. Increasingly, however, IT organizations are account-
able to their businesses. Companies are no longer satisfied with IT being a reactive cost
center and are demanding IT becomes a proactive profit center. The business wants to
understand how IT is impacting them by IT providing them with object-based statistics.
With the market now demanding business-focused IT management, some event manage-
ment vendors are moving to the next level of management-business service management.
This next level focuses on the real-time impact that individual IT events have on business
services, service level management and reporting, and end-user quality of service.
Service Desk Focus
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Service management products focus on service desk management, service level manage-
ment, and asset information and change management. Up to 90% of all calls logged
through a service desk are still taken over the phone. Service Management products prima-
rily report and act on information driven directly from end-users; although, some service
management product vendors have been able to harness the ability to manage event infor-
mation automatically fed from real-time event management products. Business managers
are demanding to know IT details about the nature of problems, how long until service is
restored, and why an outage has occurred in the first place. With the onslaught of service
level agreements, service desk personnel now need to know more in depth knowledge
about the IT assets during an outage than ever before.
Poor Integration Doesn't Help
The idea of getting real-time processed event messages into the service desk is not new,
but the failure to harness this powerful combination of management tools continues. One
reason is poor product integration. When the passing of information from an event man-
ager to the service desk is via e-mail or a command script, the communication may be sent
in line with a company's event escalation and outage processes, but this basic send-and-
forget method can be unreliable, is itself difficult to manage and track, and provides no
means of guaranteeing further action.
Additional issues wrought by poor integration between event management and service
desk tools include:
The real-time event management product looses the ability to track how events are man-
aged once the event is sent to the service desk
The service desk product can become overloaded during an event storm
The service desk product may not be able to update the real-time event management
product if a trouble ticket is managed or closed.
Passing events without further communication can cause duplication of effort
Passing events without further communication can result in no effort with both teams
assuming the other is handling the problem
Finding a Solution
The IT operations team uses real-time event management products that are designed to act
as the focal point of IT availability control for the business. The service desk uses service
management products that are designed to act as the focal point of IT services control for
the business. The tools that groups use are targeted to deliver a focal point of IT manage-
ment control for the business. This is a big reason why the operations and the service desk
need to align not just their own workflows, tools, people and processes to the business, but
why they also need to align their workflows, tools, people and processes to each other!
Other reasons to integrate both real-time operations with service management include
Combining user-reported problems with IT component and quality of service (QoS)
events to provide a truly consolidated IT management picture
The need to smooth the workflow between service desk management of user problems
and IT operations management of asset outages
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Addressing business demands to deliver a complete service level report, which includes
not just IT asset and QoS availability events and performance metrics, but also how
many end users were impacted, how much end user productivity or service delivery was
lost, and what was the cost of all those human resources waiting around for the business
service to be restored
IT operations and service desks need to seek out software technologies that can adapt to
meet a their company's business needs without assuming or dictating a rigid method of
event or service management. With greater tool flexibility, operations and service desk
people are not crammed into rigid unforgiving processes. Richer functionality between
tools drives less stringent processes because of greater process options and aides better
understanding between people-all of this can shrink the gap.
Bridging the Gap with Tools
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To pass information between the real-time operations environment and the service desk
requires processes and guidelines for the following:
Event prioritization
Event ownership
Event escalation and outage
Too many events will reduce the effectiveness of the service desk and may overwhelm it.
For quality events to get to the service desk requires that the underlying real-time event
management infrastructure supports
Escalation/de-escalation and correlation to reduce event volume to the service desk and
to provide priority and focus
Dynamic field update and events linkage to the service desk software to manage events
from either IT operations or the service desk and keep information synchronized
Abstraction, blackout and enrichment to add intelligence to events and trouble tickets
Meanwhile, the event management product must be able to accept and manage events cre-
ated by the service management solution and when appropriate, match any manually
reported event with real-time events currently open. IT operations and the service desk
should be able to choose either product to manage event processes and service problems
without the risk of duplicate effort or total neglect.
The following table illustrates the ideal role of the IT operations and service desk solu-
tions, as well as the end user position when a correctly tools environment supports busi-
ness service management in a company.
IT Operations Service Desk End User
Events are detected Events are logged I know what's going on
Issues are fixed Events are escalated and man- I am receiving the agreed ser-
aged vice
Real-time availability is moni- Service levels are managed I know where to go if there is a
to red problem
IT objects are managed Customer satisfaction is moni- I can deliver a service to cus-
to red tome rs
Bridging the Gap with People
IT Operations groups believe they are best suited to manage the complexities of a com-
pany's IT business. They do, after all, monitor and fix the IT asset issues.
Service desk personnel believe they are best suited to manage the company's IT business
needs. They do, after all, talk daily to the users (therefore the business), manage service
levels and provide the escalation and outage for IT problem management.
Service desk personnel are not as bound by an IT object based focus as IT operations staff,
while IT operations staff are not as driven by the needs of the end-user as service desk per-
sonnel. Each group needs to learn about, understand, and respect the others role to dissi-
pate the gap and focus on building a better business service management organization.
This type of culture change must be driven by management and supported by the tools.
Recently new players have emerged in the IT infrastructure supporting the needs of the
business and spanning both real-time operations and service management functions
through service level agreements. These new players have many names including cus-
tomer support managers, service managers, IT business managers and business unit man-
agers. Without a meeting of the minds between IT operations and the service desk, it will
be difficult to break down the barriers that stand in the way of fully aligning the entire IT
organization with the real service levels needs of the business.
Calculating the Benefits of a Closed Gap System
The high-end benefits of providing a solution that enables management of event informa-
tion from discovery to recovery aligned to service levels are enormous creating an envi-
ronment that is totally in tune, measurable and aligned with the needs of the business.
These benefits include:
Reduce downtime (Mean Time To Repair [MTTR])
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Find problems before they impact the business (Reduce time to detect)
Find the root of the problem (Reduce time to diagnose)
Repair problems faster (Reduce time to fix)
Reduce failure frequencies (increase Mean Time Between Failures [MTBF])
Know about problems before the customer (Increase problem awareness)
Business Service Delivery= MTBF/(MTBF+MTTR)
Customers
Service-Desk Customer calls
Problem bwareness Closed
IT Operations
Detection Diagnosis
11 Fixing
Fault Recovery
The Fault, Downtime, Recovery Process for IT Operations and the Service Desk
Effective IT Operations
Finding problems before they impact the business
Finding the root of the problem
Increased operational efficiency
Repairing problems faster
Prioritizing repair efforts
Increased availability of IT services
Time to keep up with the constantly changing business
Understanding scope of business impact
Coordinated Service Management
Knowing about problems before the customer
Better coordination with IT Operations
Input into diagnosis process
Can be early detector source
Support and enhance agreed-upon service levels
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Understanding the status of business-critical services
Increased Service Availability
Proactive management of business and IT services
Increased service levels to customers
Reduces loss of productivity
Reduces loss of revenue
Improves return on all IT investments
Coordinated event management from discovery to recovery
What Next?
The next step is Business Service Management (BSM) by BMC Software. To manage lev-
els of service requires the integration of both service management technology and event
management process that addresses both the reactive event environment and the customer/
user driven service management environment. To achieve this, you must promote
The dissolution of gap barriers that allow IT operations and service desk professional to
formulate the best practices that are needed to deliver on the promise of becoming a
business aligned profit center
Investment in flexible, open event management and service management tools that will
avoid process rigidity and foster understanding and communication
With BSM, your business and IT groups unite in the common goal of supporting critical
business services. The IT organization can then align its resources-people, processes and
technology-with key business objectives. This means you can track application, network
and database events, and prioritize your responses based on the needs of the business.
The result of this process is a closed-loop system, which ensures that resolution time is
kept to a minimum, customer satisfaction is maximized and the impact on the business is
reduced. In addition, a complete set of historical information is available for future plan-
ning and financial management. Thus, you can evolve the environment to deliver better
service at a lower cost
Evolving to Business Service Management
With BMC Software as your strategic partner, you can make a smooth transition to BSM.
Building on your existing investments, our Service Impact Management solutions link
your diverse technologies to the key goals of your business. Within this architecture:
Business and IT leaders identify critical business services and define service level
agreements
The service model enables you to map technology to the business services
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Enterprise management solutions deliver robust monitoring and management of infra-
structure components
IT service management solutions help you to manage the workflow around service level
agreements and optimize application performance
r AntJ iysi!i
Prediction
Performance

Business Servi.:es
Service Impact Moinagement
lT Servlca and Applications M1magement
1T Op1mitlons and Infrastructure M<iMgement
Ad

SerYice
Model
8'.Jsiness
Re-levanc:e
Network
Embrace An Integrated Solution from BMC Software
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Define Service Goals
BSM empowers business and IT leaders to engage in a dialogue about business services.
They translate business objectives into IT priorities by working together to define service
agreements for critical business functions. To do this, they often can leverage work that
has been done for past IT planning processes, such as disaster recovery planning. These
will include the business requirements for availability and performance.
It's also vital to identify the applications that support key business services. For example,
customer service representatives may rely on central support services, e-mail and knowl-
edge management applications. Sales may depend on catalog and inventory applications.
Service goals are defined in service level agreements. Underlying infrastructure and ser-
vice dependencies are defined in the service model-the essential component for enabling
the IT organization to relate diverse technologies to critical business services.
IT
.r
Performance Analysis
Pred.ctior Performonce
Metrics
Define Service Goals
Related BMC Software products include:
BMC Service Impact Manager
PATROL
Remedy IT Service Management Suite
Establish A Service Management Process
Service
Model
For more effective support of key business services, you can integrate the service model
with other IT service support processes. For example, the Asset Management system feeds
service information for all the infrastructure components into the service model. So as IT
events occur, the IT staff can understand their business relevance and respond accordingly.
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In addition, IT professionals can proactively manage perfonnance on business terms,
using Help Desk systems to effectively communicate with end users and resolve problems.
Incident response times can be kept up to date in the SLA Management tool. And with a
Change Management system in place, the service model can automatically adapt to the
changes you make in your infrastructure.
Service
Medel
Business

verrt and f>erfor
M<iMgi'.lrs
Establish a Service Management Process
Link Infrastructure Management
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Event and Performance Management links infrastructure capabilities to the business, via
the service model. The IT staff continues to monitor and manage different components of
the IT environment. Events are automatically detected and routed to the service model,
where the events are correlated to their business service impact. The result is that when a
component fails, the business relevance is already identified. The systems are then in place
to resolve issues seamlessly, based on the priority of the business service that is affected.
Self-healing and recovery actions can be set up to occur automatically.
By proactively managing the infrastructure, the IT organization can prevent problems
from happening altogether. Automated utilities can monitor thresholds, analyze problems
and perform corrective actions to avoid downtime and service level degradation. Business
performance can be improved with tuning of the infrastructure.
Network
Link Infrastructure Management
Related BMC Software products and solutions:
PATROL
MAINVIEW
Enterprise Network Management
CONTROL-M
SmartDBA
Enterprise Applications Management
CONTROL-SA
Enterprise Performance Assurance
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Measure Performance And Analyze Events
To ensure optimal performance in the environment, performance metrics are continually
collected to a central data store for analysis. This enables the company to understand
trends, analyze the capacity requirements of the current environment and plan future
investments based on business needs.
Predictive tools help IT to identify performance requirements before response time prob-
lems occur. These requirements are also reflected in the service model. As a result, the
company can prevent problems before they occur and measure IT performance in deliver-
ing business services according to defined service goals.
Measure Performance And Analyze Events
Related products include:
Enterprise Performance Assurance
PATROL Visualis
Remedy IT Service Management Suite
BMC Service Impact Manager (BMC SIM)
Helping you maintain advantage
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BMC Software Professional Services helps your company maintain its competitive advan-
tage through a comprehensive suite of services that includes service level management
consulting, installation, implementation, configuration, and customization. Our profes-
sional services and education offerings are designed to ensure the ongoing availability of
critical business applications, maximize product potential, reduce project risk, deliver IT
value to your business, and improve your operations. For more information about BMC
Software Professional Services, visit http://www.bmc.com/profserv.
About BMC Software
BMC Software, Inc. [NYSE: BMC], is a leading provider of enterprise management solu-
tions that empower companies to manage their IT infrastructure from a business perspec-
tive. Delivering Business Service Management, BMC Software solutions span enterprise
systems, applications, databases and service management. Founded in 1980, BMC Soft-
ware has offices worldwide and fiscal 2003 revenues of more than $1.3 billion. For more
information about BMC Software, visit http://www.bmc.com.
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