Specializations › Optimization and management of IT infrastructure

At the stage when the IT department already takes a sufficiently significant position in the company, ensures the workability of crucial for the business applications and services, as a rule, the IT service is reorganized in order to determine the strategy of its further development. The most common difficulties connected with formalization of IT infrastructure management are:

  • The IT service of the company does not know how to organize correctly the work of the IT department, how to distribute the tasks and spheres of responsibility among the employees in order to promote the business development.
  • The IT department is a group, the members of which communicate only between themselves, weakly interacting with other employees of the company, very superficially fathoming in the specific features of the company’s business.
  • The absence of regulations for the interaction between the company’s employees with the IT department. The employees do not know, whom to address when one or another problem occurs; on the other hand, the IT department does not know to whom to assign the solution of this problem. This results in delayed execution of requests and the company’s business suffers.
  • The absence of clear plans of development or optimization – the IT infrastructure is developed only when the business requires a new service.
  • Absence of control over the IT processes, execution of users’ requests, reorganization of the IT services and processes, adherence to policies and regulations.

The aim of the projects of this line is to build, optimize and automate the processes of IT service rendering according to the ITSM (IT Service Management) principles, described in the ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) library. As a result of joint work with the Customer on the project an optimal structure of management of information technologies for ensuring a high level of servicing of IT service users and effective management of investments in IT.

As a result of joint operation on a project the Customer obtains:

  • developed and approved process and normative documentation,
  • adjustment of the basic IT infrastructure performed according to agreed requirements specifications,
  • installed and set up software applications,
  • deployed system of automatization.

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Advantages for the Customer:

  • From the general corporative point of view the figures of economic efficiency of the IT services increase, corporate and inter-corporate procedures are standardized, the transparency of the IT department operation is increased and, finally, the work of the IT department is rationalized and aimed toward to the common corporate goals. Ultimately, this makes it possible to consolidate the production resources, optimize expenses for IT and increase the investment attractiveness of the company.
  • From the point of view of the IT, the implementation of the ITIL/ITSM processes makes it possible to organize the work of the IT service; in particular, to solve the problem of relations inside the IT team and build efficient communications, shorten failures in the IT infrastructure and increase the level of the customer’s satisfaction, as well as to motivate the relevancy of investments into automated control systems.

 

Advantages of addressing VERNA:

  • Availability of certified specialists who has practical experience in implementation of such projects;
  • Complex approach to the realization of projects for implementation and optimization of ITSM processes that include training and implementation of software product;
  • Availability of successfully realized complex projects;
  • Usage of the best international practices both for implementation at the customer’s site and for management of the project itself.

Does the company need ITIL?

Many heads of IT departments, having read some excerpts from the library, think that they do not need it. Indeed, the ITIL is a huge set of documents and regulations, and far from all of them are necessary of each particular company, all the more that the implementation of all processes described in the ITIL can take a rather long time depending on the IT infrastructure size. The ITIL does not provide any specific recommendations, which can be applied to a particular company, but only contains general recommendations and therefore requires adaptation for each particular case.

MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework), designed by Microsoft, has absorbed the ITIL recommendations, structured and adapted them for the Microsoft platform.

In case an infrastructure built on the Microsoft solutions is used, it will be more rational to use the MOF rather than the ITIL in its pure form. But there is one “but”: a large number of Service Desk solutions is developed for the ITIL, such as HP OpenView ServiceDesk, BMC Remedy Service Desk, IBM Tivoli and several Russian developments, such as Naumen Service Desk, 1S-ESKV, Itilium and Terrasoft, while for the MOF there are no Service Desk solutions yet. Microsoft promises to release in 2009 its own solutions – System Center Service Manager.

What the implementation of ITIL gives to the company?

  • operational efficiency of users’ problems solving is ensured,
  • lower expenses on IT infrastructure due to optimization of management processes,
  • increased security level,
  • increased level of availability of corporate services,
  • lower number of incidents,
  • ITIL makes the IT to work for the business development.

 

VERNA offers a complex approach to the ITIL implementation at all company levels. Because the ITIL – it is not only a set of regulations or instructions for an IT department, it is also a scheme of interactions between the IT department and other departments of the company.  Therefore the implementation influences all departments of the company, from the management to simple employees. Within the framework of the ITIL implementation the Service Desk system is implemented that makes it possible to manage the solving of any incidents and problems of the users, as well as to distribute and plan the IT department resources and control the process of request execution.

 

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