SAManage IT Management Blog

IT incident management is a key aspect of IT service management (ITSM) that helps companies deal with IT-related events in the most efficient and effective manner possible.  The ITIL framework describes an incident as “any event which is not part of the standard operation of a service and which causes, or may cause, an interruption to, or a reduction in, the quality of that service”.

According to Wikipedia, the primary objective of IT incident management is “to restore a normal service operation as quickly as possible and to minimize the impact on business operations, thus ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained”.

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Experts have claimed that companies embarking on ITIL typically implement IT incident management first, since its benefits are most visible, and can be realized most rapidly.

Whether it’s a hardware failure, or a software glitch, formal IT incident management policies can enable organizations to minimize downtime, optimize performance, reduce support costs, and maximize return on their technology investments.  But, in order to achieve successful IT incident management, companies must define and enforce standardized workflows and activities for:

• Identifying, logging, and categorizing problems
• Evaluating and diagnosing issues
• Assigning support “ownership” to specific IT staff members or teams
• Monitoring and tracking the incident as it is being handled
• Facilitating communication between the support owner and the impacted end user(s)
• Incident escalation (when appropriate)
• Resolution and closure

Additionally, many IT industry pundits believe that reporting is a crucial component of IT incident management.  For example, in order to uncover ongoing problems within their infrastructure, organizations must periodically analyze the number of total incidents by severity and/or category, the number of incidents resolved, the number of incidents reopened, he number of incidents requiring escalation, and other vital metrics.  Additionally, performance indicators such as the average time to restore must also be tracked, to determine if procedures are being followed, and how effectively they are working.

Many confuse IT incident management with problem management, which are both part of ITIL.  It is important to remember the difference.  IT incident management addresses the handling of individual issues, while problem management focuses on the handling of recurring or repeat problems (those that result in multiple incidents).

The next release of the SAManage on-demand IT management service, scheduled for late March, will include robust features for IT incident management, as well as capabilities to support other ITIL-based ITSM processes such as  problem, change, and release management. Visit our Web site to learn more.

Over the last decade, many companies have sought to improve IT service management efficiency by embracing the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework – and the numbers are steadily rising.  Early adopters of ITIL, which is the world’s most widely accepted IT service management methodology, include such notable organizations as Proctor & Gamble and IBM.

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According to Wikipedia, ITIL is “a set of concepts and practices for managing information technology (IT) services, IT development, and IT operations”.  Trademarked by the UK’s Office of Government Commerce, it originated in 1989 – in part, due to companies’ ever-growing dependence on their IT infrastructures – as a catalog of books, each providing consistent, proven, documented best practices that highlight a specific aspect of IT operations.  Many believe that the concepts and practices covered within these books are loosely based on a set of processes for controlling and managing IT operations.

The various components and elements of ITIL include:

• Service Support. Request management, incident management, problem management, and other processes are aimed at ensuring that end users have the appropriate technologies and services to perform their jobs.
• Service Delivery. Service level management, capacity management, IT service continuity and availability management, and other activities help IT departments proactively provide needed services to end users.
• Service Management Implementation, which defines processes for developing a vision, analyzing the organization, defining objectives, and deploying related services.
• Security Management, which is designed to keep all applications, information, and systems fully protected.
• Infrastructure Management. This discipline directly relates to the management of software and hardware made available to end users, and includes design and planning, deployment, operations, and technical support.
• Business Perspective, a collection of best practices for enhancing IT service provision.
• Application Management, procedures and policies aimed at improving software development efforts across the entire lifecycle.
• Software Asset Management. Practices such as software license compliance, inventory tracking, and software definition, configuration, use, and retirement help minimize the cost and risk associated with the acquisition, utilization, and maintenance of software assets.

Today, ITIL encompasses not only the advice provided by the published volumes (which grew to more than 30 before being consolidated and re-organized into eight logical sets in 2001), it offers a supporting professional qualification scheme.

Companies can adopt ITIL in a variety of ways.  They can follow its policies exactly as specified.  Or, because the descriptions, checklists, tasks, and procedures offered by ITIL are flexible, many businesses choose to incorporate only those aspects that are most applicable to their specific business needs, or opt to tailor or modify various practices to address unique requirements.

Those companies that have embraced ITIL have reported significant benefits, including:

• Minimized IT expenses and better control over IT budgets
• Improved IT service delivery and better alignment of IT with the business needs
• Enhanced end user satisfaction
• Better adherence to IT standards and guidelines
• Increased productivity and resource allocation

The most recent version of ITIL, version three which was released in 2007, focuses on four key areas – strategy, design, transition, and operation. Visit our Web site to learn more about ITIL, and how SaaS IT management systems from SAManage can help enable the successful implementation of this important IT service management technique.

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As companies continue to rely heavily on their technology systems to ensure smooth, successful business operations – and in particular, customer service – more and more of them are turning to ITIL as framework to adopt IT service management. Unlike traditional approaches to IT management, which focus solely on improving internal productivity and cost-efficiency, ITIL based IT service management is a methodology for managing technology infrastructures in a way that will directly, and positively, support the business needs.

Wikipedia defines IT service management as “a discipline for managing information technology (IT) systems, philosophically centered on the customer’s perspective of IT’s contribution to the business. ITSM stands in deliberate contrast to technology-centered approaches to IT management and business interaction”.

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According to SearchCIO.com, a premier research and information resource for CIOs and other management-level IT professionals, ITSM is centered around four key performance metrics:

• Growth and value – increases in income and revenue as compared to IT investments.
• Budget adherence – the ability to achieve IT goals, while staying within pre-determined spending limits.
• Risk impact – the efficient discovery, evaluation, and avoidance of IT-related threats.
• Communication effectiveness – the ability to collect and assess customer feedback to accurately determine satisfaction levels.

IT service management is a process-driven discipline that combines standardized policies and procedures with proven best practices to increase IT quality, and ensure that technology architectures are structured and administered appropriately to satisfy customer and business needs. The benefits of IT service management include:

• Creation and delivery of end-to-end services that boost customer satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability.
• Alignment of IT operations with customer needs, as well as revenue and retention goals.
• More rapid identification of problems and weak spots in IT environments, so they can be corrected before they hinder customer service and support.
• Improved insight into how certain technology solutions affect the customer experience.
• Enhanced allocation of IT resources and assets to more precisely address customer requirements.
• Smarter IT budgeting and spending.

In fact, IT service management has become so important, that it is one of the key areas highlighted within the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

In the next release of the SAManage service, scheduled for late March, we will launch a powerful new ITIL-based ITSM environment, which will include Incident, Problem, Change, and Release Management.

Visit our Web site to learn more about IT service management, and how our robust on-demand IT management tools can help you better execute on your ITSM strategy.

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We are off to a great start in 2010, and we’re very excited about what we have planned for the year ahead. We wanted to share some of the things we’ve been working on recently.  We’re really looking forward to launching these updates, and we hope you will be too:

IT Asset Management

• Software Metering. Many users have asked us to add this capability.  We’re planning on releasing an updated agent with software metering capabilities shortly. You’ll be able to see which software is actually being used and how often.
• Agent Auto-Update. The new software metering agent will support remote auto-update, and provide an easier way to update your SAManage agent in the future.

IT Service Management

• ITIL-Based Service Desk. We are busy upgrading the help desk component to a more comprehensive IT service desk based on ITIL. This is going to be a great addition to our service, as it will allow users to implement the ITIL framework in a way that is tightly integrated with our IT Asset Management capabilities.
• Service Catalogs. Allow IT organizations to manage and publish a service catalog defining all services available by the organization. Based on the ITIL framework, service catalogs allow organizations to further streamline their service and support processes.

Platform

• Dashboard. We are getting ready to release a new version of the dashboard.  This new edition will offer more extensive customization, a wider variety of widgets, and enable you to add as many widgets as you’d like from all areas of the service.
• Customize Views. Select the columns in each view, and re-order them based on your unique preferences or needs.
• Mass Update. This feature provides an easier way to make bulk changes in each area of the service.  For example, you can close multiple tickets, reassign a group of computers to a site, change the status of multiple assets, and much more.

We’ll keep you posted as each of these new features becomes available.  And, of course, we continue to welcome ideas and suggestions from you.  Your feedback and input helps us determine what new capabilities and enhancements should be added in the future.

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For most companies, IT service management is critical to keeping the systems that employees and/or customers rely on performing at peak levels at all times.  Therefore, ensuring that related IT service desk processes are efficient – for example, that issues are addressed and resolved as promptly as possible – is of the utmost importance.

The SAManage SaaS-based IT management system offers a variety of features designed to enhance IT service desk operations, and to help IT service management teams to do their jobs better.  These capabilities allow staff members to interact directly with the end users who are reporting problems or requesting services provided by the IT team, and automates the execution and tracking of key tasks. This, in turn, offers significant benefits, including:

• Improved communication and collaboration between IT professionals and those they support
• Accelerated issue handling and resolution and streamlines IT support processes
• Increased productivity of IT service desk workers and other stakeholders throughout the company
• Reduced support costs

How does SAManage enhance IT service management?

SAManage IT service management capabilities provides a facility that automates the routing of certain types of support incidents to specific individuals.  The requester selects a ticket type when they are creating a new request (note: these ticket types are fully customizable).  This lets the system know who the request should be assigned and distributed to.  For example, a technical problem would be immediately sent to a technician working the IT service desk, while a request for new software would be routed to someone in purchasing.  This helps speed up response times by ensuring that the right people are designated to handle each and every ticket.

Additionally, businesses can set up multiple email drop boxes – one for each ticket type.  So, for example, acquisition requests would be sent to acquisitions@acme.com and forwarded to the acquisition drop box.  New acquisition requests would automaticly get assigned to members of the procurement department who could then respond to each accordingly.  Or, requests for software or hardware installations would be sent to installations@acme.com, a support drop box that might be overseen by certain IT service management professionals.

But, most importantly, SAManage provides a direct line of communication between those who open tickets, and those who handle them.  When a ticket is created and routed, the IT professional receives an email alerting them of the new issue.  They can then simply reply to that email to ask questions, or gather more information from the end user.  Responses to those questions can also be sent via email.

With SAManage, organizations can dramatically improve service to end users by streamlining and enhancing their most vital IT service management processes – making issue handling and resolution faster and more effective than ever before. Visit our Website to learn more about our solutions for IT service management, as well as our powerful SaaS IT asset management tools.

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Discover how on-demand IT Asset Management and Help Desk software from SAManage can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and improve your service levels.
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