Managing IT Infrastructure

An Uphill Task



The two main components of the IT department in most large and medium sized

organizations are IT applications and IT infrastructure. While it may seem

obvious, IT infrastructure includes, desktops, laptops, Local Area Network

(Switches), Wide Area Network (Routers and Modems), data centers, servers,

storage, back up devices etc. Each of these infrastructure components is an

asset for the organization, satisfactory working of which will lead to end-user

satisfaction of IT services.

Technological innovations in each of these components help IT users perform

their business function efficiently and effectively. But at the same time, it

creates new challenges for IT managers to maintain and manage these assets.

Further, when the organization grows vertically (the number of employees) and

horizontally (geographical spread), IT infrastructure also grows exponentially,

increasing the challenges for IT managers.

Some of these challenges are:

• Geographical growth of business leads to the spread of IT assets and
  
  maintaining the inventory becomes a challenge.
• Business users want any-where, any-time and any-devise connectivity, which
  
  adds several devises in asset list.
• Use of mobile devises (laptops/ hand-helds/ PDAs) creates challenges in
  
  managing these devises from security point of view.
• Reducing life cycle of IT assets due to technology changes leads to faster
  
  upgradation and therefore obsolescence of earlier devises. This leads to
  
  frequent updation of the asset database.
• Configuration changes in the application and operating system due to
  
  security threats, users' changing expectation needs frequent updation of
  
  database.
• Manpower shortage (IT Skills) complicates the matter if database updation
  
  is manually done.
• End-users expect quick resolution to IT problems as they are under
  
  business pressures.

Great Expectations



To meet the above challenges, an IT manager has to perform two basic tasks:

Maintain the asset database: He

should know the physical IT assets across organizations, as he needs to manage

these assets. He should know the configuration of these assets to make the right

decision to optimize the use of these assets.

Maintain IT service levels: He

needs to track problems faced by end users and ensure quick resolution, as per

the agreed SLA (Service Level Agreement) with the business.

In a small organization, maintaining a register or Excel sheet, which is

manually updated, can make the above tasks easier. But for an organization with

a big user base and large geographical spread, manually maintaining this

database is impossible. This necessitates a tool, which helps IT manager to

perform these basic tasks.

Various

IMS tools, such as, HP's Openview, IBM's Tivoli, CA's Unicenter have been

developed which has a basic database of IT assets and their configuration. These

databases are populated by regular discovery of assets by using various

discovery tools such as Microsoft SMS, Inter LANDesk, Peregrine Enterprise

Discovery, Tivoli Inventory. Once the data is updated various tools are used for

IT service management such as, HPOV Service Desk. This ensures an updated asset

database. For maintaining SLA, reporting and monitoring of user's complaint/

problem is small part of user satisfaction, but main task is monitoring of the

performance of infrastructure components.

Various other tools are integrated with the asset database for management of

network, applications, servers, desktops and standard applications.

Active CMDB



In short, updated configuration management database (CMDB) is at the core of

IMS. The success of IT service management and effectiveness of IT infrastructure

related decisions depend on timely updation of CMDB.

CMDB automatically discovers and regularly updates configuration item

attributes, ensuring CMDB data integrity and accuracy. Active CMDB detects

network and distributed configuration items such as laptops, desktops, and

servers by synchronizing with a variety of external systems and asset management

data sources,

CMDB strategy is based on industry standards and a service-oriented

architecture that automatically synchronizes management data and allows

customers to combine information sources for a comprehensive view of IT. Active

CMDB strategy is to allow HP and other vendors to populate and consume data

consistently within the database to better unify disparate data sources. Active

CMDB provides out-of-the-box support for key ITIL processes ranging from

incident management to service level management and beyond. Active CMDB also

understands the data elements and data relationships that support service

management and asset management processes, as well as the metadata needed to

support multi-process interaction.

To extend the value of CMDB data beyond IT service processes, active CMDB

provides business intelligence, reports, and analyses that reveal trends and

performance drivers. Data from multiple processes and external sources can be

combined to produce business reports focused on the needs of IT and financial

management. Defining and controlling an organization's assets establishes the

foundation of an effective CMDB. Using an active CMDB strategy, customers can

protect existing IT investments with the ability to integrate data from other

vendors' offerings into the database. The automated data acquisition and

updating process supports consolidation, reconciliation, and a variety of

synchronization techniques including asset categorization based on business

rules.

CMDB analyses can help IT managers align resources to meet service level

requirements and reallocate asset purchases to reduce the total cost of

ownership.

CMDB technology can be configured for use with any enterprise relational

database system. Fully ITIL compliant, active CMDB can accommodate multiple data

sources and integrate with a variety of business information systems. If Active

CMDB meets all what is promised, it will be a great boon for IT managers.

Vijay S Mahajan, head, IT

Infrastructure and Information Security



Mahindra & Mahindra