UNIT-1 INTRODUCTION TO IT INFRASTRUCTURE

IT infrastructure of an organisation consists of equipments, software, hardware or any other components which
are needed to deliver IT services to its customers. It provides the base on top, of which programs or project-
specific systems and capabilities of an organization are created.
IT infrastructure can be divided into several categories such as:
 Purchased software’s (e.g. ERP packages, RDBMS, operating systems, e-mail ,tools, office tools,
financial applications etc.
 IT infrastructure hardware(e.g. Machines, desktops, servers ,switches, communication devices, etc.)
 Software development
 Software maintenance(corrective, perfective, adaptive, block changes)
 IT services(e.g., software setup, help desk, computer administration, etc.)
 Human resource(working staff).

IT infrastructure management aims to manage these components for effective utilisation and to provide better
services to customers. All the business activities are depended upon the infrastructure so effective management
is very essential.
IT infrastructure has to be developed to manage and support the requirements of the organization. It is done by
the IT department by consulting the top management.
Various points for IT management are:
 IT infrastructure is dependent on the key success for the various operations of an IT organization.
 IT infrastructure management creates an environment that reduces IT complexities.
 It automates and supports required performance and service availability levels and resolves problems to
ensure the business continuity.
 An organization scales its Information Technology(IT) infrastructure to support business growth,
managing global networks, databases, application becomes an important task.
Some of the objectives if IT infrastructure are:
Decrease the duplication of effort and increase organisational productivity
Decrease business risk
Ensure the use of standards
Ensure minimum downtime
Improve adaptability necessary for a changeable environment
Improve the information flow in information system
Ensure interoperability among organisational and external entities
Maintain effective change management policies and practices
Reduce operational costs
Increase service quality
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Increase business planning.
IT skills and managerial practices also play an important role
in IT infrastructure management. The diagram given below
presents an overview of IT infrastructure highlighting the
importance of human element in it.
 The last three bottom layers depicts physical shared
components such as computers and common
technologies.
 The second bottom layer contains the commonly
shared services such as database services and
connections to internet.
 The components of these two layers are changed into
IT infrastructure services by human element using its skills, experience and knowledge.
 The human element binds IT components into a reliable set of IT infrastructure services which are
shared in business processes across the organisation.
 Good IT infrastructure management avoids the occurrence of IT infrastructure problems and resolve
them before they impact business availability.

Challenges in IT infrastructure management

IT infrastructure consists of resources and capabilities which are built through the interaction between
technology and people in the organisation. It consists of elements shared by different levels of users and
processes, and provides platform to the people to share knowledge. IT infrastructure and its management are
very essential for smooth running of an organisation. Some challenges are faced in management and
development of IT infrastructure those are
Suitability to the organisation :
IT infrastructure management needs to develop and deploy(organise or send out) management activities in such
a way that they support operational and strategic goals of the organisation.
The management activities consists of two parts :
 maintenance of existing systems and
 development of new infrastructure.
Information system development relies on existing hardware and software resources. Vision is required in both
business and IT order to achieve what technology can do and how to make its best possible use.
Low Cost and High Quality : Management activities should achieve low cost with high quality. Sometimes,
interactions and partnership with outside IT service providers may provide solutions to this challenge.
Adaptability in changeable Environment :
 IT infrastructure should not only be reliable in operations today but it should also be open for changes in
the future, to incorporate future business requirements.
 All choices that are made in developing the infrastructure are important because the infrastructure is an
organisational asset and meant to be used for an extended period.
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Decrease Business Risk :
Infrastructure provides the foundation upon which business applications are built. Therefore, it is required to be
managed in such a way that it does not fail under any circumstances. Since these challenges are related to IT
management problems, IT managers should develop management procedures to match the current and future
requirements.

DESIGN ISSUES OF IT ORGANISATION AND IT INFRASTRUCTURE

Success of any IT organisation depends on :
 The suitability of its design with the business needs and the availability of effective and efficient IT
infrastructure support.
 To support an operating environment it is necessary to have organisational design which matches the
business requirements, necessary infrastructure, good strategy for the deployment and technology and
well defined accountability plan for the use and application of technology.

Design of IT Organisation
Organisational design refers to the way in which an IT Organisation divides its work force into different
tasks and operates by coordinating these tasks. To design an IT organisation, major factors influencing
organisational design and mechanism should be used to estimate how the design is effective and identify the
strengths and weaknesses of the organisation.
Designing an effective organisational structure is a real challenge which considers learning and benchmarking
processes for it. Keeping this challenge in mind, IT leaders try to design a perfect organisational model that
addresses all problems in their current structure.
According to people3, Inc report “ Structuring for Success: Building Blocks for IT Organisation Design”, while
designing an IT organisation, IT organisation should seek the answers for four questions: what works, what
does not work, when will it work and why ? The answer for these four questions will provide the essence of a
“best practice” for a specific organisational setting and help IT leaders in determining whether a specific “best
practice” is appropriate for their organisation or not.
The IT and business leaders should follow the four basic steps of the organisational design process to increase
the rate of success of their IT re-engineering initiatives.
 Business Driver Assessment : This process identifies the business drivers that lead to the development
of a re-engineering(re-constructs) strategy.
 Organisation Readiness Assessment : It ensures that all the constraints and barriers to organisational
re-engineering are evaluated and are taken into consideration during the design and implementation
processes.
 Structure Model Assessment : This process understands the strengths and weaknesses of each IT
structure model(centralised, decentralised or hybrid). It selects the organisational design that is not only
aligned with business strategy but also fits to the culture of the organisation.
 Business Impact Assessment : This process conducts a series of “what if” business

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Design of IT Infrastructure
Here a design document which contains the complete information about the IT Infrastructure is prepared.
Generally the design document contains following information:
i. Design of Data Centre and Server Room
ii. Design of IT network
iii. Hardware and software specifications of Servers, Desktops and Laptops
iv. Specifications of Server and Client Operating systems.
v. Details of access, controls to be implemented to access critical IT assets, etc
vi. Internet bandwidth, security devices and applications
vii. E-mail service to be setup
viii. Design of backup and disaster recovery mechanism.

An efficient and effective IT infrastructure requires continuous organisation attention. IT infrastructure design
should be able to take care of various tasks necessary to keep the business of an organisation running smoothly.
A good IT infrastructure design needs extensive experience in designing and implementing infrastructure.
Examples of some infrastructure services include :

 Active Directory Design : It explores the organisational structure and geographic spread of an
organisation to assess the most effective deployment of active directory. It includes the directory
structure, deployment of domain controllers, global catalogue servers, bridgehead servers and single
master role servers.

 Migration to New Release of infrastructure :

This includes the review of implications to be incurred in migrating from old to new software releases
(for example, from NT to Windows 2003, or Exchange 2003,etc). It also prepares plans incorporating an
assessment of the risks along with measures to be taken to reduce them.

 Protecting the Enterprise : The Business managers should understand the information assets, their
values and the they have to draw up a security risk assessment with countermeasures. Typical areas
covered include :
o operating system lockdown,
o application system development guidance,
o firewall placement and rule sets,
o intrusion detection requirements,
o user access controls and
o written policy documents for management and staff.

 Local Area Network(LAN) and Wide Area Network(WAN) design and tuning
It includes designing for LANs and WANs, including use of hubs, switches and routers; placement and
configuration of DNS(Domain Name Servers) and DHCP(Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol ) servers.

DETERMINING CUSTOMER’S REQUIREMENTS

It is the process which identifies the customer’s requirements to include voice of the customer, data, and
expectations of the customer in designing a process strategy. To incorporate customer’s expectations
effectively, they are usually converted into a measurable expression and then are used to ensure process
compliance with the customers needs.

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Determination of customer’s requirements is not static and is an ongoing matter and needs to be updated as the
customer’s requirements are changed. Data in requirement determination is collected using customer surveys
and the like.

Six sigma program is a business management strategy used to improve the quality of process outputs by
recognising and removing the causes of imperfection and variation in manufacturing and business processes. It
emphasises the importance of customers and considers them as a separate department.

IT SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT
 IT systems management helps in designing, implementing, and managing IT infrastructures.
 It commonly refers to enterprise-wide administration of distributed computer systems, etc.
 It assists in managing any IT infrastructure to achieve optimum efficiency, stability, reliability,
availability and support.
 It also helps in running any IT organisation in a great ways by understanding and utilising proven
systems management techniques.
 IT system management includes complete details of how to implement each key discipline in the places
such as mainframe data centres, midrange shops, client-server environments Web-enabled systems.

Common Tasks of IT System Management

 IT systems are interconnected into complex supply chains and extended onto the desktops of home and
business users who are not known to the managers of the systems.
 In such environment, IT professionals are expected to have responsibility for maintaining the stability
and responsiveness of IT production environments.
 IT systems management is designed to help them in designing, implementing and managing any part of
an IT environment or the entire IT infrastructure.

Some of the common tasks of IT systems management are listed below:

 Maintaining hardware inventories
 Server availability monitoring and metrics
 Software inventory and installation task
 Anti-virus and anti-malware management
 User’s activities monitoring
 Capacity monitoring
 Security management
 Network capacity and utilization monitoring.

Organisational Management Approaches

There are many approaches which are followed for organisational management. The popular ones are-People-
Process-Technology and Strategy-Tactics-Operations approaches.

People-Process-Technology Approach
This approach considers that an IT systems management is based on the fundamental belief that People,
Process, and Technology(commonly known as acronym ‘PPT’) are the three key components of any successful
IT organisation. The model given below defines the core focus areas in managing organisational improvement.
There is a need for these three areas to be addressed while considering organisational improvement. These three
components are greatly related to each other.

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  People It refers to the human resource involved in the IT
system management process at higher level. It generally
includes infrastructure managers, directors and CIOSs.

 Process People involved at this level are system analysts,

senior systems administrators and supervisors, who are
typically involved with designing and implementing systems
management processes and procedures.
 Technology This component deals with technical professionals
such as systems programmers, database administrators,
operations analysts, network administrators and systems
administrators, who are responsible for installing and maintaining systems.

Strategy-Tactics-Operations Approach This is another commonly used approach for organisational

Management. It consists of three important components, namely Strategy, Tactics and Operations and
commonly identified by acronym ‘STO’.

 Strategy Long terms objectives of an organization are managed at strategic level. These objectives are
defined in terms of value, identity, relations perquisite, choices, etc

 Tactics Objectives set at strategy level are translated into specific goals at this level.

 Operations Goals are translated into action plans at operational level. Actual realisation of goals
happens at this level.

IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT PROCESS

IT service refers to the delivery of information processing capabilities at an agreed quality level using a
combination of software, hardware, people, networks, etc. The way IT organisations serve their customers, and
the quality and value of the services they offer to their customers, continues to be a focus for companies
worldwide.
Quality can be defined in terms of capacity, security, availability of services, performance, etc. To deliver the IT
services to the end user at agreed quality level, it is required that all processes engaged in providing services
should be managed properly.

IT service management :
 Links to the various management processes necessary to ensure consistent supply of quality IT services.

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  It concentrates on customer-centric approach of IT management and business interaction in contrast with
technology-centric approaches.
 IT service management focus on the quality of services that an organisation offers and concentrates on
the relationship of the organisation with the customer rather than only focusing on technology and
organisational issues.
 Nowadays, it has become an integral part of an organisation and is seen as an innovative way which can
be used to prove the business value of IT services, to cut costs and improve service quality.
 IT service management needs an effective , mechanism which allows the effective interaction of IT
personnel with users of their services.
 The main goals of IT service management is to provide IT services with the critical needs of the
business, to manage services to ensure appropriate IT support for critical business priorities, to minimise
Total Cost of Ownership(TCO) and to improve Return On Investment(ROI).

These goals are summarised below.

 Customer Centric IT service management tries to align IT services with the needs of the business and
its customers. It ensures the IT services offered by an organization are aligned with the needs of
customers and users. It is the management of the people, process, and technology that cooperates to
ensure the quality of IT services, according to the levels of service agreed with the customer.

 Availability and Stability of services It also deals with improving the availability and stability of the
services and tries to improve the quality of the services delivered.

 Improved Communication For a business to grow customer satisfaction is very necessary. IT service
management gives a support system which allows effective interaction of IT personnel within IT
organisation and with its users.

 Efficiency of Internal Processes It service management works towards improving the efficiency of
internal processes.

 Cost of Services IT service management makes the offered services cost effective. It tries to reduce the
cost of the services and improve the quality of the services provided by the organization.
It service management is divided into two parts : service delivery and service support. The below figure shows
parts

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TCO is defined as the total cost of an IT asset throughout its lifecycle,, right from its acquisition to its disposal.
ROI is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment.

Service Delivery
Service delivery refers to the management of the IT services. It involves management practices to ensure that IT
services are provided as agreed between service provider and the customer. The management services provided
are:

Service Level Management It offers service-delivery management across business units and helps in
successfully delivering, maintaining and improving IT services up to the expected level through a constant cycle
of agreeing, monitoring and reporting to meet the customer’s requirements and objectives.
The steps followed in implementation of service level management are
 preparing service catalogue(list of items),
 defining service and operational level agreements
 formulating service quality plan.

Financial Management It mainly concentrates on the monetary resources of an IT organisation to achieve

organisational goals. IT offers cost –effective management of the IT assets and resources used in providing IT
services. A good financial management process greatly helps IT managers in making decisions for planning and
investment.
Financial management activities includes :
 IT cost accounting,
 budgeting for IT services and activities,
 project investment,
 appraisal,
 cost recovery and
 IT charging and billing activities.

IT Service Continuity Management

 Business organisations are expected to continue to operate and provide services in an uninterrupted
fashion.
 IT Service Continuity Management process helps and ensures that all IT services are capable of
providing value to the customer in an event when normal availability of solutions fails.
 It manages risks and ensures that an IT infrastructure of an organisation can continue to provide services
in an unexpected event.
Major processes involved in IT service continuity management are :
 collection of service level requirements,
 proposing contingent(uncertain) solution,
 formalising operation level agreement and
 formalising contingency plan.

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Capacity Management
Prime objective of capacity management is :
 To ensure that the capacity meets current and future business requirements of an organisation in a cost-
effective manner, and
 IT infrastructure of the organisation is used in an efficient manner.

Capacity management involves planning, analysing, sizing and optimising(perfect or effective) capacity to fulfil
the demand in a timely manner and at a reasonable cost.

Availability Management
 The goal of availability management is to ensure that all IT services deliver the level of availability that
the customer requires consistently and cost effectively.
 It optimises the capability of the IT infrastructure services and supporting organisation to deliver a cost
effective and sustainable service availability that meets business objectives.
Processes involved in availability management are :
 defining service level requirements,
 proposing availability solutions and
 formalising operational level agreements.

Service support
This framework enables effective IT Services. Various management practices involved in service support are
discussed briefly.
Configuration Management
 It deals with identifying and defining configuration items in a system
 Further monitoring the status of these items, processing requests for change and verifying the
completeness and correctness of configuration items.
Configuration management offers :
A logical model of the IT infrastructure by identifying, maintaining and verifying configuration item,
finding relationship among configuration items and planning, designing and managing a Configuration
Management Database(CMDB).
Incident Management
 The goal of incident management is to ensure that restoration of normal service operations is done as
quickly as possible with the least possible impact on either the business or the user and minimum
interruption in services, in a cost-effective way.
 It helps in maintaining continuity of the service levels and underlying service desk function.
Problem Management
 It ensures that al possible problems and known errors affecting the IT infrastructure are identified and
recorded properly.
 It finds and resolves the underlying root causes of incidents and prevents similar incidents from
happening again.
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Problem management also provides :
 valuable inputs such as recording problems and
 known errors of other service management processes like incident management, change management
and service desk.
The major activities of problem management includes problem control, error control and report generation.

Change Management
 The goal of change management is to ensure standardisation of methods and procedures so that it
minimises the impact of any change on service quality.
 It offers a way to introduce the required changes to the IT environment with minimal disruption to
ongoing operations.
Change management offers :
 reduced impact of change,
 better cost estimation of changes,
 better information management of changes and
 improved personnel productivity.

Release Management
 The objective of release management is to formulate efficient mechanisms of building and releasing new
software versions.
 Release management ensures the quality of the production environment by using formal procedures and
checks while implementing new versions.
Release management is responsible for activities such as :
 planning , coordination and implementation, designing and implementation of efficient procedures for
the distribution and installation of changes of IT systems, management of release of software into the
live environment and its distribution, gathering user’s feedback and maintaining definitive Software
Library(DSL) and Configuration Management Database(CMDB).

INFORMATION SYSTEM DESIGN PROCESS

The basic objective of the information system design is to create a customised instance of the IT system
architecture from a basic model.
A commonly accepted practice for designing an IT system architecture is to use a model of the business
processes as the starting point and then subsequently to redefine it using a step-by-step process by following
selected computing paradigms, such as :
1) custom client-server, 2) internet computing and so on..
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 This kind of design process is commonly known as business-process centric design processes. This design
process has two types of requirements: functional and non-functional.
 Functional requirements describe the behaviours(Functions and services of the system that support user
goals, task or activities.
 Non functional requirements consists of those requirements that specify criterion that can be employed
to judge the operation of a system, rather than specific behaviours.
These requirements are often treated as secondary considerations while designing. It is thought that they
influence, but do not overly constrain the design or deployment of the IT solution. Due to this, the business
process may not comprise adequate operational support for systems management.
To have a good design, there is a need to develop views and visualisation techniques to combine the design
requirements for business processes and system management involved in those processes.

Design Models
Models in It system design can be represented in many ways. There are three popular and relevant system
models discussed below:
 Business processes based model : It is a business system model that represents the business processes.
These models deal with the representation of processes involved in a business. The main goal behind
business process modelling is to analyse the current processes and suggest future improvements. It is
usually performed by business analysts and managers who are looking for improvements in process
quality and efficiency.
 Management activities based model: It is a business system model that represents the management
activities which support the business processes.
 Hybrid Model : It is a business system model that combines both business processes and IT
management processes.

System Context Diagram

A system context diagram provides the highest level view of a system and is used to specify details of a system
design.
 It is used in systems design to represent all external entities that may interact with a system.
 It gives a convenient representation for a system model.
 System context diagram is similar to block diagram and normally shows a software-based system as a
whole, and its inputs and outputs from/to external factors.
 System context diagrams are also related to data flow diagrams and help in understanding the context in
which the system is part of.
System Context Diagrams are typically drawn using labelled boxes to represent each of the external entities
and an additional labelled box to represent the system being developed. There relationship between entities and
the developed system is shown using lines.

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The main system in system context diagram is kept at its centre with no details of its interior structure and all its
interacting systems, environment and activities surrounding it. The relationships are labelled with a subject-
verb-object format, for example, “customer places order”.
System context diagram can also use many other different drawing types such as ovals, stick figures, pictures,
clip art or any other representation to convey meaning and represent external entities.

Unified Modeling Language(UML)

 Is a standardised formal visual specification language for object modelling and frequently used for
drawing system context diagrams.
 It is a general-purpose modelling language which includes a graphical notation used to create an abstract
model of a system, referred to as a UML model.
 UML defines several standard representations for architecture elaboration, to name a few-use case
diagrams, collaboration diagrams, class diagrams, sequence diagrams, component and deployment
diagrams.
 A system context diagram follows the structure of use-case diagram.

Use-Case Diagram
 It is used to identify the primary elements and processes that form the system.
 The primary elements are called actors and the processes are called use-cases.
 The use-case diagram shows which actors interact with each use-case.
 It gives a graphical overview of the functionality provided by a system in terms of actors, their
goals(depicted as use cases), and the dependencies between those use cases.
When we adopt process view of system management, use-case diagram becomes a very important tool in
explaining the workflow of business processes and activities associated with IT management.

Business System Context Diagrams

It is used to identify a business system which involves a set of business processes. These business processes fall
into four categories: self-service, collaboration, information aggregation, and extended enterprise. Below
diagram is of Business system context diagram.

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This diagram can be used as a starting point on which more detailed elaboration for the subject business system
can be built. For example, in a business environment, commerce portal can be considered as extended enterprise
process, customer account management application can be considered as self-service process, e-mail system can
be considered as collaboration process, and market support application can be considered as an information
aggregation process. This business system model comprises of two roles: one for customers and other for
customer relationship personnel.

IT Management System Context Diagram The concept of business system context diagram can be extended
to define IT management system context diagram which identifies an IT system that contains a set of IT
management processes.
In the below diagram the IT management processes are clubbed into eight groups. Similar to business system
context diagram, IT management system context diagram can be used as a starting point based on which an
elaboration can be developed for the subject IT management system.
For example, IT management system context diagram can be used to identify the following:
 How system’s designs are developed, deployed, and operated
 How administration of an IT system is done
 How customer relationships are set up and sustained
 How the availability is maintained

Managed Business System Context Diagram There is a natural possibility of combining the business and IT
management views of the system. The managed business system model integrates business and management
aspects of the system.

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 Managed business system context diagram is used to represent such business models. Business aspect is
described as the functional view of the solution whereas management aspect is described as the non-functional
view of the solution.
The combined process model shown in figure is a composite view of the two previous models. It can be
observed that the managed business system is divided into business application domain(area of interest) and a
management domain. In the business and IT management combined process model, there are three types of
roles viz. One for customers, one for IT management personnel and other one for customer relationship
personnel. Managed business systems can be very complex with respect to following aspects:
 All of the management activities and tasks required to support the operations
 Maintenance and management of the necessary of the IT infrastructure that supports the business
process.
 Operation, maintenance and management of the IT infrastructure that supports the business process.

PATTERNS FOR IT SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT

In the field of IT, an architect evaluates a business problem to build a solution for it. The design of solution
begins by :
 gathering inputs about the problem,
 an outline of the desired of solution and
 any special considerations that need to be taken care in the solution.
The architect designs the solution considering these inputs. To improve the design over time,
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  it is required to capture and reuse the experience of the it architects so that future developments can be
carried out in simpler and efficient way.
It is usually done by
o capturing the knowledge gained from each past development
o using it to build a repository of assets.
It architects can then build future solutions based on these proven assets. This reuse saves not only time, money
and effort but also helps to ensure delivery of a solid and properly architected solution.
A pattern helps to facilitate the reuse of assets that have been used, tested and proven to be successful.
 The concept of patterns has been used extensively in the fields of design and architecture.
 Patterns have also been widely used in software engineering and object-oriented designing to provide
efficient software solutions.
Dr C Alexander in his book, A Pattern Language, 1977, has given a very simple and concise definition of
patterns. According to him,
“each pattern describes a problem that occurs over and over again in our environment, and then
describes the core solution to that problem in such a way that one can use this solution a million times
over without ever doing it the same way twice”.
 Patterns for e-business approach enables architects to implement successful e-business solutions through
the re-use of components and solutions from proven successful assets.
 Patterns approach is based on a set of layered assets that can be used by an existing development
methodology to build a solution.
 These layered assets are organised in such a way that each level is built on the previous level.
An e-business solution spans multiple business domains and is more complex to implement than traditional
application systems.
It requires a constant and clear exchange of ideas and information between the business owners driving the
solution and the IT personnel responsible for its implementation.
Though constructs such as design patterns are very useful in the development of the solution, they have minimal
impact in the early phases of the solution design where key decisions are made on the overall structure of
solution and end-to-end architecture.

Patterns for e-business

 The concept of patterns for e-business, primarily introduced by IBM, extends the domain of software
patterns to earlier phases of the application development cycle.
 These patterns helps in understanding and analysing the complex business problems, and breaks them
down into smaller, more manageable functions that can then be implemented using lower-level design
patterns.

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There are four major types of patterns for e-business:
Business Pattern It helps in identifying the interaction between users,
businesses and data.
Integration Pattern It groups multiple business patterns together when
a solution cannot be provided based on a single business pattern. The
business and integration patterns have the same structure, as shown in
figure
Application Pattern This pattern provides a conceptual layout
describes how the application components and data within a business
pattern or integration pattern interact.
Runtime Pattern This pattern defines the logical middleware structure
supporting an application pattern. A runtime pattern depicts the major
middleware nodes, their roles and interfaces between these nodes.
There is one more pattern for e-business called Composite Pattern which represents commonly occurring
combinations of business pattern and integration pattern. This pattern for e-business represents a set of proven
architectural solutions. IT systems management can also be integrated with these solutions using a patterned
approach by linking business processes with IT management processes.

IT INFRASTRUCTURE LIBRARY
The organisation are continuously enforced to deliver better IT services at lower cost. To provide guidelines to
achieve this goal and cope up with the challenges, several management frameworks have been developed; one
of the best known frameworks is the Information Technology Infrastructure Library(ITIL).
 It is the most widely accepted approach to IT service management worldwide.
 It is a customisable(change according to customer) framework of best practices developed to promote
quality services in IT sector.
 Developed in the late 1980’s by the CCTA( Central Computing and Telecommunication Agency )(now
known as OGC(Office of Government Commerce)), it became popular worldwide and de facto standard in
service management in mid 1990’s.
It was originally designed to serve as a set of standards to be followed by service providers to deliver IT
services to the British government. After its inception, public companies have realised the benefits and
implemented parts of ITIL in their internal IT departments. ITIL has now become acceptable to almost
everyone as it is a public domain framework with scalable property.
ITIL provides a systematic approach to manage IT services, from their inception through design,
implementation, operation and continual improvement.
 The processes identified and described within ITIL are supplier and platform independent and apply to
all aspects of IT infrastructure.
 ITIL consists of set of concepts, policies and practices used to managing IT infrastructure, development
and operations.

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  It provides a comprehensive description of a number of important IT practices with detailed catalogue,
procedures and tasks that an IT organisation can adapt for its need.
 It provides business with a customisable framework of best practices to achieve quality service and
overcome problems associated with the growth of IT systems.
ITIL has grown up to three versions by now.
ITIL version 1 It is the initial version of IT infrastructure library which has expanded over 30 volumes. At the
beginning, ITIL version 1 was projected as a set of formal methods, which was later changed and published as
set of guidelines.
ITIL version 2 Originally, the ITIL was published as a collection of series of books, each of which covered a
particular practice of IT service management. Number of books in the initial publication of ITIL (ITIL version
1) has grown up to 31 volumes. To make ITIL more approachable and financially manageable, ITIL version 2
consolidates the volumes of ITIL version 1 into logical sets by grouping the related process guidelines of IT
management, applications, and services. The eight book volumes of ITIL version 2 are grouped into three parts
as follows.
1. The IT service management set
 Service delivery
 Service support
2. Operational guidance set
 ICT infrastructure management
 Security management
 The business perspective
 Application management
 Software asset management
3. Implementation guidelines set
 Planning to implement service management
4. Supplementary set
 ITIL small-scale implementation(it has been published later, not part of original eight
publications
ITIL version 3 It updates the ITIL version 2 by expanding the scope of ITIL in the domain of service
management. ITIL version 3 comprises of five key volumes which are listed below:
 Service Strategy This volume is the main strength of the new ITIL library which focuses on helping
IT organisations to improve and develop over the long term. It introduces the service lifecycle and
encourages the development of a business perspective. This volume guides both the service provider as
well as the business customer, through choices that they need to achieve service excellence.
The key topics which are present in this volume include :
a. business case development,
b. service assets,
c. service value definition,
d. market analysis and
e. service provider types.
The processes which are included are IT financial management, service portfolio management and
demand management.
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 Service Design This volume provide good practice guidance on design of IT service and processes to
create valuable It service assets for an organization within business constraints such as time and
money. It gives a framework for service design which considers the customer's present and future
requirements, while firmly maintaining the business view. Processes which are included in this volume
are :
a. service level management,
b. supplier management,
c. availability management,
d. IT service continuity management,
e. supplier management,
f. information security management and
g. service catalogue management.

 Service Transition
This ITIL volume provide guidance on managing the many aspects of service changes, preventing
undesired consequences while allowing for innovation.
It is essential reading for anyone seeking to deliver 'it changes with the best possible benefit to the
business.
Topic covered in the volume are
o transition planning and support,
o service assets and configuration management
o changes management,
o release and deployment management
o knowledge management.

It also states the key roles and responsibilities of staff involved in service transition.

 Service Operation This volume introduced delivery and control activities used to support high quality
service operations.
It covers best practices for :
a. balancing conflicting goals (such as reliability vs. Cost),
b. problem management,
c. event management,
d. incident management,
e. service desk,
f. asset management,
g. technical and application management.
It also defines the key roles and responsibilities for staff involved in service operation.

 Continual Service Improvement Improvements in service quality enables the business to survive in a
competitive environment and helps in achieving the best possible outcomes. This volume introduced
the process involved in identifying and introducing a cycle of service management improvements.
The goal of continual service improvement is to align and realign IT services to changes in business
needs by identifying of implementing improvements to the IT service (such as service quality, process
effectiveness, efficiency and cost effectiveness) that support the business processes.

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Alternatives to ITIL
Although ITIL is the most popular IT service management guideline, it is an approach which is available for
standardizing IT service operations. IT service management is a concept and though related to ITIL, it is not
completely equivalent to ITIL.
ITIL version 2, only a subsection of it – entitled IT service management-talks about the IT service aspects.
Moreover, ITIL version 3 volumes do not have any separate description on it. There are some other alternatives
to ITIL such as Microsoft Operations Framework and ISO/IEC 20000. the following discussion provides brief
discussion on them.

Microsoft Operations Frameworks

Goal of every business process is to provide better services at lower cost. The Microsoft Operations
Framework(MOF) helps to achieve the same.
 It aims to help its customers in achieving operational excellence across the entire IT service lifecycle.
 Originally it was developed to provide IT professionals with knowledge and processes required to align
their work in managing Microsoft platforms cost-effectively and with high reliability.
 Newer version of MOF (MOF 4.0) offers its customers new ways to cope up with the new challenges in
providing better IT services.
 It provides practical guidelines for each and every day-to-day activity and helps in maintaining the
regulatory requirements for enhancing organizational capabilities.

IT Service Lifecycle of MOF

It is comprised of three phases and one manage layer as shown in Fig. Manage layer operates
throughout the cycle of other three phases and works as the foundation of IT service Lifecycle and covers the
components that apply to all lifecycle phases. These three phases and foundation layer are explained below.

 Plan Phase
The task of this phase is to plan and opimise an IT service strategy so that the set business objectives
can be achieved.

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  Deliver phase: It ensures that IT services are developed and deployed successfully and are ready for
operations.

 Operate phase: This phase is responsible to ensure that IT services are operated, maintained and
supported effectively to meet business objectives and expectations.

 Manage layer: This layer is the foundation of the IT service lifecycle, and processes in this layer apply
to all phases of the lifecycle. It is responsible for IT governance, risk management, change
management, configuration management, etc.

To align IT services to the business requirement, each phase of the IT service lifecycle contains Service
Management Functions(SMFs). These SMFs define and structure the processes, people, and activities required.
Each SMF has three to six key processes, and each process has one to six key activities.

ISO/IEC 20000
ISO/IEC 20000 was originally developed to reflect best practices of ITIL. It equally supports other IT service
management frameworks such as Microsoft Operations Framework, components of ISACS's cobIT framework,
etc ISO/IEC 20000 IT service management standard consist of two parts -the first part contains a specification
for IT service management whereas second one defines the code of practice for service management.

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