ITIL-based IT Service Management Applied in Telecom Business Operation and Maintenance System
ITIL-based IT Service Management Applied in Telecom Business Operation and Maintenance System
ITIL-based IT Service Management Applied in Telecom Business Operation and Maintenance System
Li Zhu1, Meina Song2, and Junde Song2
1
School of Electrical Engineering in Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China Email: zhulibupt @gmail.com 2 School of Electrical Engineering in Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China Email: {mnsong, jdsong}@butp.edu.cn
AbstractNowadays telecom operators have been aware of the significance of the telecommunications business Operation Management System, and have started to build an electronic operation and maintenance system, but how to plan the relationship between Operation Maintenance System and network management, as well as the function system which Operation Maintenance System want to achieve still lack of a unified model. IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a internationally popular standard of IT operation and maintenance process. The article discussed how to introduce IT service management into the operation and maintenance of telecom business systems, it also designed management method which accommodate to telecom services operation and maintenance to improve the efficiency and quality of management to meet changing business needs and ensure systems' stable operation. The article focused on two design methods of management process which have stronger process uniformity and can effect a change more quickly, it also applied IT service management thinking to the actual maintenance process of telecom business systems. Index TermsITIL, ITSM, telecom business operation and maintenance.
example, studied logical framework, workflow and implementation of incident management and change management in IT service management system. With the improvement in the level of information technology, the application environment of telecommunications enterprises has become more and more complicated, and customers are demanding an good quality of service [3]. Therefore, telecom operators need to introduce an ITSM (Information Technology Service Management) concept which is process-oriented and be with the core of customer satisfaction and service quality to make a comprehensive, focused, effective monitoring and management to their network, host and database systems. As a provider of Telecommunication business, in order to meet the requirements of telecom operators, has also been introducing various control processes actively, to improve their product quality of maintenance. Consequently, introducing IT Service Management to Telecommunication business Operation and Maintenance System is also important. II. ITIL AND ITSM FOUNDATIONS A. ITIL introductions ITIL is currently the most widely-adopted approach to implement IT service management, and provides a set of best-practice guidelines for IT service management [4]. The ITIL guide breaks down the key principles of the IT service management discipline into the following subcategories, which are collectively known as the ITIL
I. INTRODUCTION Today, ITIL is recognized as the de-facto standard for managing enterprise IT and forms the basis of the international standard ISO 20000 [1]. ITIL was developed by the British Office of Government Commerce based on input from many industry leaders [2]. ITIL provides guidance and a common terminology for service management without being prescriptive about implementation. IT service management can enhance the management efficiency and quality to meet changing business needs. After improvement and development in 20 years, ITIL has evolved the best framework for IT service management. Based on ITIL and IT service management framework which is the core of processes and implementation, the article take a telecommunication company's IT service management processes for an
This work is supported by the National Key project of Scientific and Technical Supporting Programs of China under Grant No. 2008BAH24B04 and the innovation technology star program of Beijing under Grant No. 2007A045 and Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University under Grant No.NCET-08-0738. 2009 ACADEMY PUBLISHER AP-PROC-CS-09CN005
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framework, shown in Figure 1 [5][6]. The whole framework of ITIL includes six modules in the following [7]: planning to implement service management; the business perspective; service management; information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure management; security management and application management. Service management, including service support and service delivery, is the core module of ITIL [8]. B. IT Service Management ITSM based on ITIL, which integrates the best practices of global IT management and forms the normative truth standard to reduce effectively cost and improve the quality of service, is applied widely [9][10]. Service support and service delivery are considered to be at the heart of the ITIL framework for IT service management [11]. The Service Delivery module covers the processes involved in planning and delivering IT Services, and the Service Support module describes the processes required for those IT Services' daily support and maintenance [12]. IT Service Delivery function is closely related to the organization's annual planning cycle and assessment. Therefore, IT tactical management formed a strict functional logic. The five main functions are Service Level Management, IT Service Financial Management, IT Service Continuity Management, Capacity Management, and Availability Management [13]. IT Services Support focuses on the IT infrastructure's daily operations management, including five relevant basic management processes: Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Configuration Management, and Release Management [13]. III. THE DESIGN OF THE INCIDENT MANAGEMENT PROCESS An 'Incident' is any event which is not part of the standard operation of the service and which causes, or may cause, an interruption or a reduction of the quality of the service [14]. The objective of Incident Management is to restore normal operations as quickly as possible with the least possible impact on either the business or the user, at a cost-effective price [15]. A. Incident Management flowchart Figure 2 is the UML activity chart which describes the process of incident management in maintenance of Telecommunication Business. B. Role definition in Incident Management Process Role definition in Incident Management Process is as follows: 1) Support: support is Audit and Manager of the Event Management Process, who is responsible for the examination of the event reports, to classify the incident to determine the lead Project Team of the incident, furthermore, to monitor the operation of the whole incident process.
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Front processing
Background processing
Site observation
[Unapproved] [Approved]
maintenance. After the incident, he needs to record Details of the process and Phenomenon when incident occur, then to report. And he is responsible for some event processing tasks. 3) The assigner of project: he is a project manager generally, responsible for the incident to take the lead, and assign specific personnel responsible for the handling of this incident. 4) Incident processor: The person who is responsible for the settlement of this incident as soon as possible. It can be added when necessary to tie in with other project team to solution the problem. C. Incident Management Processes explain Processing of incident is as follows: 1) Submit incident reports Incident reporting is the entrance to the workflow. When event reporter is informed that the equipment or system events, he should first of all, implement the "submit incident reports" operation to create the incident case. According to the experience of workers at the scene is different, the incident report may be submitted directly to The assigner of the lead project, and may also be issued to support to audit, review and then sent to lead project. 2) Check incident reports When support receive the report, he needs to check whether the format is correct, the events description is clear, the influence of events is described, event log is enough. If find the problem, support need to implement the "need to modify" operation, give report back to the
incident reporter; If there are no problems, support implement the "audited through the" operation, the incident report will be forwarded to the assigner of lead project. 3) Modify incident report When Incident reports on events are give back from support, the reporter need to implement "re-submit" to submit report gain. 4) Determine lead project Under normal, project manager also work as the assigner of project. The lead project of case should judge whether they are responsible for the case firstly after receiving incidence report from Engineering staff or support. If the analysis that the incident should be led by the project, and then implement "agreed to take the lead in" operation; if that should be led by the other projects, he needs to implement operation of "the request of other projects take the lead in". 5) Designated the person to deal with The assigner of the lead project should considering the manpower of project and situation of the case when implement "agree to take lead", then specify appropriate person in charge and other projects to help. 6) Matching incidents The person in charge of the case needs to verify the current incident and the incident in events library. If matched, he can resolve the event directing by the solution in incidents library. If there is no compatible incident, we should diagnosis and figure out the reason, and then resolve the incident. 7) Background processing In the processing of incident, it is necessary for the processor and the reporter of incident to work together until the event recover. 8) Front processing The reporter is responsible for implementation of solution provided by the processer, and check whether the solution is valid. if the solution is good and event recovers, the reporter can implement "resolve successful" operation, then the case entered the scene and observed stage; if that solution does not work, report implement "continue to analyze" operation, give it back to processer continue to resolve the incident. 9) Site observation After the phenomenon in the incident is disappear, the needs of arrangements for a period of observation in according to the specific circumstances of the incident. If there are not anything unusual in the observation period, we can consider that the incident has now been ruled out, and then implement "observation pass" operation to close the case. If any problem is found by incident reporter in the observation period, then should implement "observation does not pass" operation and the case go back to the stage of "processing". 10) Audit processing result Support checks the cases that have pass the observation. If found inadequate to deal with the results of verification, the project is not completely filled out, or there are other places do not meet the requirements, he should implement "verify does not pass" operation, then
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the case will back to observation status. Otherwise, should implement "verify pass" operation to close the case. IV. THE DESIGN OF THE CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESS Change management is the process during which the changes of a system are implemented in a controlled manner by following a pre-defined framework/model with, to some extent, reasonable modifications [16]. A. Change Management flowchart Figure 3 is the UML activity chart which describes the process of change management in maintenance of Telecommunication Business.
Change applicant/analysis Project Manager/Test Manager Change achievement Change verify
Program modifications
Designated dealer
Changes to achieve
Verify changes
B. Role definition in Change Management Process Role definition in Change Management Process is as follows: 1) Change the applicant / analysis people: the general staff for the development, when the software bug was found or when the need to develop new features, submitted application to change. 2) Project Manager / Test Manager: General in charge of the project was responsible for approving the changes to the application, designating staff to deal with change. 3) The person who achieves change: the development of general staff for the project, responsible for the development of the realization of the change. 4) The person who verifies change: responsible to verify the effect of software changes, the general test for the project. C. Incident Management Processes explain Change management process details are as follows: 1) Submit an application to change Submitting an application to change the software is the entrance of the workflow. Whether to repair program bug or develop new features, when the developers need to modify the software responsible for the maintenance of their own product, the applicant should first of implement
"submit an application to change" operation, to create case corresponding to the software change. 2) Determine program and impact analysis After the submission of an application, we must accord to the change content to determine the basis of the initial solution and analysis impact based on the solution. 3) Approval change application Project managers make a strategic decision based on the information Provide by applicant and analysis of change, considering the technical, market and other factors. The results divided into three types: approved changes, does not approve the changes, modify retrial. 4) Program modifications If the result of examination is "modified retrial", analyst should modify the Program under the project manager's proposal, and then implement "modify complete" operation. 5) The officers designated somebody to deal with The person who achieve Changes specified by the project manager on the implementation of "the approval of changes to" the operation. 6) Changes to achieve Achieving changes in accordance with the program approved by the project manager, including code and documentation changes. 7) Verify changes Verify changes through testing or other means (such as document review) to verify the results of changes. If the results meet the requirements, can implement "authentication through" operation to close software change case; otherwise, the implementation the operation of "authentication does not pass" and return to "change to achieve" continue to deal with. 8) Cancel changes Project manager can implement "Cancel Change" operation at any time, suspend the ongoing changes in work, a direct closure of case. Project Manager should record the reasons for cancelling changes in the implementation of "Cancel Change" operation. V. CONCLUSIONS In this paper we've described an IT Service Management system which applied to maintenance of Telecommunication Business. We discussed two basic workflows of Service Management system: Incident Management and Change Management. Our experience
shows that this system has regulated maintenance of Telecommunication Business providers' action to some extent. Furthermore, it also has enhanced the quality of maintenance as well as has opened up a way to improve customers' satisfaction. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors wish to thank Xiaoqi Zhang, Hongbo Guo, and Shu Zhang. This work was supported in part by a grant from PCN&CAD Center, BUPT. REFERENCES
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