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What is ITSM?
Lately IT organizations have been focusing greatly on the strong links between IT and its underlying business units. Service- or process-centric approach, with the customer ruling, is indicative of this trend.
IT Service Management (ITSM) is an outgrowth of ITIL. ITSM derives its guidelines and set of best practices to follow from ITIL (although there are other frameworks, too).
Standard IT best practices can indeed enhance an organization's effectiveness and value. However, a critical aspect is to ensure that services, tools, processes and the organization are all aligned well.
How different is an ITSM-enabled environment from a traditional IT environment? Here's a comparison for easy understanding:
Traditional IT |
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ITSM process |
Technology focus |
>> |
Process focus |
‘Fire-fighting’ |
>> |
Preventative |
Reactive |
>> |
Proactive |
Informal process |
>> |
Formal best practices |
IT internal perspective |
>> |
Business perspective |
Operation-specific |
>> |
Service-orientation |
ITSM encompasses two main areas: IT Service Support and IT Service Delivery.
IT Service Support includes Service Desk, Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Configuration Management and Release Management.
IT Service Delivery includes Service Level Management (SLM), Availability Management, IT Service Continuity, Capacity Management and Financial Management for IT Services.
ITSM and ITIL, in a nutshell, are both an integrated, process-based set of best practices to manage IT services. While ITIL defines and documents the best practices, it is ITSM which employs them in order to meet customer requirements and organizational priorities.
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