Automated Documentation as Support at the Implementation of ITIL Processes

Ewald M. Jarz; Ingemar Mayr 1

Abstract The present paper examines which benefit an automated documentation of the IT infrastructure can have for the configuration management process of ITIL, and whether it is possible to fully automate documentation. The result is the conclusion that the documentation process can be fully automated. It follows from this analysis that the automated documentation can only supply information for the ITIL configuration management, respectively for the CMDB. Keywords ITIL, configuration management, automated documentation.

aim of ITIL is basically to orient the technology centered IT organizations more on processes, services and customers. Therefore ITIL recommendations are an important basis for reliable, secure and economically IT services. Figure 1 shows an overview of the ITIL framework.

I. INTRODUCTION
The increasing relevance of IT for a company's business success demands a strategic alignment of IT organizations. Today, a substantial challenge is to understand and run IT as a business in order to archive that the IT organization evolves from a technology provider into a strategy-oriented service supplier. The principles, practices, methods and processes necessary for this are summarized by the term IT service management. The ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library), an essential best practices guideline for the IT service Management, supports and consolidates this approach [1]. The configuration Management, especially the configuration management database, is the most important source of data and information within the ITIL framework. The configuration management process offers a logical model for a complete IT infrastructure. To provide such a model it is necessary to collect data and information on the IT environment. The present paper examines which benefit an automated documentation of the IT infrastructure of a company can have for the configuration management process, and whether it is possible to fully automate documentation. The main question is: does an automated documentation fulfill the ITIL compliance?

Fig. 1. The ITIL-Framework [2] ITIL compliance means that IT-processes and IT-services stick to the rules of the ITIL framework. With the norm ISO/IEC 20000 an international approved standard for the IT service management has been specified. This norm defines requirements to ensure IT-services in sufficient quality for the customers [3]. It is a process-, service- and customer-oriented method with the purpose of sustainable increase of IT-service quality. Because ITIL is a standard and no norm it is not possible to certify IT-organizations by ITIL. But it is possible to certify the IT service management. The official ITIL-certification is done by the Information Systems Examination Board (ISEB) for the English-spoken area and the by the Exameninstituut voor Informatica (EXIN) in the Netherlands for the non-English-spoken area. Both organizations develop the examinations in close coordination wit the OGC and the Information Technology Service Management Forum (itSMF). The official ITIL-certification schema consists currently of three certificates: ITIL Foundation Certificate in IT-Service-Management ITIL Practitioner Certificates in IT-Service-Management ITIL Managers Certificate in IT-Service-Management

II. ITIL AND ITIL COMPLIANCE ITIL emerged in the late 80th of the last century. It grew from a mandate of the British Government to develop an efficient and cost-effective use of IT resources for the public sector. At the beginning of the 90th guidelines evolved, which became known as Information-Technology-InfrastructureLibrary (ITIL). Main content were best practices for the IT branch. The first version of ITIL consisted of 60 separate volumes, which have been combined to nowadays valid seven volumes. Since the year 2000 the ITIL framework is edited by the office of government commerce (OGC) [1]. ITIL is not a fixed standard, nor a norm like for example ISO 9000/9001. It is an independent framework that describes a systematic approach to optimize IT infrastructures and IT services. The

III. ITIL CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT An integrated part of all service-management processes in ITIL is the configuration management process. Its purpose is to provide a detailed model of the IT-infrastructure. The main tasks are identification, documentation and review of IT infrastructure components, including versioning and relations.

All components and resources needed for IT-services (like servers, drivers and so on) are called Configuration Items (CI). CIs have relations and attribute, are unique identifiable and have to be administrated. Table 1 shows an overview of CIs in ITIL [4].
TABLE I CLASSES OF IT COMPONENTS [5]
Software Operating systems Drivers Server Organizer UPS Network interface cards (NICs) Hard disks Systems Technical literature Contracts Facilities Applications Middleware Hardware Workstations Router, Switches Printers Motherboards Monitors Applications Instruction manuals Licenses Non-IT components Materials Spare parts Notebooks WLAN components Streamers Processors Other peripherals Processes Handbooks Configurations Utilities and Tools Firmware

simple graphical description up to a whole picture of complex and dynamic tasks. Automated inventorying can mean hardware inventorying as well as software inventorying. Several tools are available on the market. Most of them have the focus on cost control, license management, surveillance and efficient use of resources. The trend on the market goes to the asset management, an entire administration of all data concerning IT systems [6]. To have a sustainable overview about the ITassets it is necessary to combine the raw data of the inventory with e.g. service-level-agreements, license contracts and leasing contracts. Figure 2 shows a network plan, automatically generated with the tool DocuSnap 4.0.

Documents and Documentations

Fig. 2. Network plan generated with the tool DocuSnap 4.0 To cope the ITIL service-management requirements a tool for an automated documentation (ITSM-Tool) should be able to represent as much ITIL processes as possible fully and integrated. Also a shared data base should be provided. The official ITIL committees dont allow the certification of software tools. Therefore there is no method to find out how ITIL-conform a tool is. There are some seal of approvals like ITIL certified tool or PinkVerify [7], but these dont have an official ITIL character [8]. At the moment ITIL provides no precondition for certifying, but the international standard ISO 20000 will offer that [9].

CIs are stored and managed in the configuration management database (CMDB). The CMDB is not only an inventory database, it shows also the relations between available components. For this purpose CIs can be put in relations to business processes. Therefore not only relational databases are subsumed under the term CMDB but also listings, tables, reports and so on. There are three possibilities to document CIs: manually, partly automated or fully automated. Manual documentation is a boring and annoying thing for administrators. But the complexity and the need of documentation increase. An automated documentation could solve this problem.

IV. AUTOMATED DOCUMENTATION To document an IT infrastructure various configuration items have to be recorded. The documentation process should be done fully automated to minimize time, costs, capacities and resources. The documentation process includes four steps:
1. 2. 3. 4. Inventorying process Saving and updating process Preparation process Visualizing and analyzing

In the inventory process all IT infrastructure components are recorded and handed to saving and actualizing process. The main challenge is to develop methods and strategies to gather the needed information in heterogeneous systems. The saving and updating process gets all of the information of the inventorying process and stores these into a data store. The preparation process takes the data out of the database and transforms them into interpretable information. The visualizing and analyzing part of the process uses the input of the preparation process and provides the information according to the needs of the user group. That can be from a

V. CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK Automated documentation can be used as information- and working-fundament for the ITIL configuration management process. But the inventory database is not comparable with the ITIL configuration management database (CMDB), because the CMDB needs to contain information about processes, ITservices and other ITIL disciplines. The critical factor of success for a CMDB is the relation between configuration items, processes and IT-services. This cant be done by an automated documentation tool. Therefore automated documentation can only supply information for the configuration management, respectively for the CMDB. Though the documentation process can fully be automated there are further tasks for the configuration management, e.g. creating a reference model for the documentation process to establish standardized procedures or an analysis of heterogeneous system environments to ensure completeness as well as a profitability analysis to show the benefit of automated documentation. The more it is possible to establish a reference model for the documentation process, the more new impulses for automated documentation in other industries will arise.

1 Ewald Jarz is since 2002 director of studies of business informatics at the University of Applied Sciences in Kufstein, Andreas Hofer Str. 8, Austria. Ingemar Mayr is project manager of development, ITELIO GmbH, Kiefersfelden, Germany

REFERENCES
[1] OGC, 2007, OGC - IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) About. OGC - IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), [Online] 23. 05 2007, http://www.itil.co.uk/about.htm

[2]

Modified from van Bon, Jan, van der Veen, Annelies und Pieper, Mike, 2006, Foundations in IT Service Management basierend auf ITIL, Amersfoort: Van Haren Publishing, 2006 see ISO/IEC 20000-1, 2005, International Standard ISO/IEC 20000-1, Genf: ISO, 2005 see OCG, 2005, Service Support, 3. Netherlands: The Stationery Office, 2005, p. 352 Elssser, Wolfgang, 2006, ITIL einfhren und umsetzen, Mnchen, Wien, Carl Hanser Verlag, 2006, p. 265 Heyer, 2005, Lizenzkosten sparen, PC Professionell, 12 - 2005, p. 11
ITIL certified tool is a trademark of Serview GmbH, PinkVerify is a trademark of Pink Elephant Pink Elephant, 2005, IT Service Management Tools Information Technology Infrastructure Library Compatibility Considerations, Toronto, Canada, 2005. Wepler, Jrgen, 2006, Sind ITIL Zertifikate wertlos? Computerwoche, 28. 02 2006, p. 2

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