ITIL Compliance

ITIL, or the IT Infrastructure Library, is a collection of best practices and experiences intended to help in deliver a high quality of IT Services. ITIL spans over IT infrastructure, operations and development. (Definition taken from the ITIL guide to SAM)

ITIL origins from the 1980's and was developed by the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) of the UK Government in response to the growing dependence on information technology. CCTA recognized that without standard practices, government agencies and private sector contracts were independently creating their own IT management practices resulting in common mistakes and increased costs.

Specops Software's solutions can assist in implementing and maintaining many ITIL processes and disciplines, specifically in the following:

Service Support

The Service Support ITIL discipline is focused on the User of the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) services and is primarily focused at ensuring that they have access to appropriate services to support their business functions.

To a business, customers and users are the entry point to the process model.

Incident Management

Incidents should be classified as they are recorded, Examples of Incidents by classification:

  • Application/Service/software not available
  • Application bug
  • Disk-usage threshold exceeded
  • Hardware
  • Automatic alert
  • Service requests
  • Forgotten password
  • Password change

Problem Management

The goal of the ITIL discipline Problem Management is to resolve the root cause of incidents and thus to minimize the adverse impact of incidents and problems on business that are caused by errors within the IT infrastructure, and to prevent recurrence of incidents related to these errors.

ITIL Configuration Management

The ITIL discipline Configuration Management is a process that tracks all of the individual Configuration Items (CI) in a system. A system may be as simple as a single server, or as complex as the entire IT department. Configuration Items are best carried out by Group Policy settings in a Windows environment.

Configuration Management includes:

  • Creating a parts list of every CI (hardware or software) in the system.
  • Defining the relationship of CIs in the system
  • Tracking of the status of each CI, both its current status and its history.
  • Tracking all Requests For Change to the system.
  • Verifying and ensuring that the CI parts list is complete and correct.

Correct inventory of Configuration Items and thus Group Policy settings are essential for this process.

Release Management

Release Management is used for automated distribution of software and hardware, including license controls across the entire IT infrastructure. Proper Software and Hardware Control ensure the availability of licensed, tested, and version certified software and hardware, which will function correctly and respectively with the available hardware. The goals of release management are:

Plan to rollout of software

Design and implement procedures for the distribution and installation of changes to IT systems Effectively communicate and manage expectations of the customer during the planning and rollout of new releases Control the distribution and installation of changes to IT systems

Security Management

The ITIL process Security Management describes where information security fits in the management organization. ITIL Security Management is based on the code of practice for information security management called ISO/IEC 17799.

Keeping information and systems properly protected by a good Password policy is of great importance.

Software Deployment Management (ICT Management)

ICT Deployment provides a framework for the successful management of designing, building, testing and roll-out (deploy/deployment) of projects,applications and software.

The ITIL discipline "Software Asset Management is all of the infrastructure and processes necessary for the effective management, control and protection of the software assets within an organisation, throughout all stages of their lifecycle.”

Software Asset Management Benefits

Benefits from well managed software assets can be achieved from simple yet effective changes for example:

Saving money on licensing costs by increasing widespread use of volume licensing agreements. By centralising the procurement, organisations ensure they buy only what is needed and get the best possible price.

With an effective Software Asset Management plan in place, an organisation knows exactly what software and hardware is installed on the network, making it easier to identify what is needed to manage technological change, and easier to protect and secure your data through effective patch management.

Where possible, it is recommended to standardise desktops, which will lead to reduced training, support costs and incompatibility between applications.

Next Step

If you haven't considered ITIL for your organization you should. Many times you already have ITIL processes in place without knowing it. Becoming increasingly aware of all the collected experiences contained in ITIL will most likely make your IT organization run even smoother.