ABACUS & IT Service Management

Transcription

1 From managing the compliance of your organization with ITSM, to supporting ITSM-based processes as activities, you can count on ABACUS Version 1.7 Published October 2017

2 Managing IT complexities through IT Service Management As organizations evolve to become critically reliant on IT, having an effective means to model, measure, and manage IT is equally critical These days, managing the complex landscape of Information Technology which underpins an organization is as much a part of keeping the lights on as traditional disciplines such as finance and HR perhaps even more so. As organizations are critically reliant on IT, having an effective means to model, measure, and manage the IT is equally critical. Any downtime or failure in IT can immediately halt the services that the organization provides. This ultimately costs the organization in terms of lost revenue, diminished client satisfaction and retention, and failure to be able to respond to and take advantage of new opportunities. The discipline of IT Service Management (ITSM) has arisen to address precisely these issues. At the heart of IT Service Management is the notion that the IT exists to provide or support services consumed by the rest of the organization. It is very much a business-centric approach rather than an IT-centric approach, where the ITSM framework helps the organization to characterize their IT in terms of the services they provide. ABACUS is ideally positioned to support ITSM ABACUS is an advanced and highly adaptable modeling tool that allows the organization to capture its IT data, and data about the services it provides, in order to better understand and manage these functions. ABACUS has been designed to support and optimise ITSM activities. It is worth noting that ABACUS can also be used to support other IT and business-centric measurement, modeling and management disciplines, including enterprise architecture and digital transformation practices. This is ideal for organizations which require or prefer a single coherent approach and repository. ABACUS ITSM in the context of wider IT Governance P a g e 2

3 Supporting ITSM with ABACUS For many organizations, there are two key levels on which using a tool to manage ITSM is beneficial. The first is to model the compliance of your business, in terms of adhering to an ITSM approach. The second is to use a tool to actually support the many and various processes and activities that an expert ITSM approach requires. ABACUS can help you model the ITSM compliance of your organization ABACUS will support your team s ITSM activities at both of these levels. The tool can be adapted to your practice and business. Users can choose from a library of frameworks and select different styles of models appropriate to your projects. ITSM Compliance and Framework Selection Various frameworks exist for ITSM, with one of the most widespread being ITIL, a UK government-developed ITSM framework. Out-of-the-box ABACUS is shipped with an implementation of the ITIL framework Furthermore, ABACUS is recognized as the most flexible tool on the market, and as a result new frameworks for other ITSM approaches can be implemented in ABACUS in a matter of hours. All of this can be done directly through the ABACUS user interface - there is no need to bring in a team of consultants to reconfigure the tool. (ITIL Framework implementation) P a g e 3

4 The previous figure shows the ITIL Framework as implemented in ABACUS. As you will see, all of the ITIL Process Areas and Disciplines are explicitly modeled. Because of this, an organization can use ABACUS in this way to create drilldown views from each process area, documenting the way in which the process area is fulfilled by the organization. Your organization s compliance to the ITSM approach being adopted can be explicitly modeled using this method. Being able to calculate cost across your organization is important. But being able to accurately predict the effect on costs of future changes is truly empowering: ABACUS enables both. The level of compliance can be measured by reporting on Process Areas currently unsupported or unfulfilled by that organization. Finally, the organization can track their level of compliance over time, as the ABACUS models can be explicitly evolved: historical snapshots can be stored and made available for comparison as your practice evolves. The ITSM Asset and Configuration Management Process Asset and Configuration management is a key activity for any ITSM endeavour. Several features in ABACUS have been tailored to enable and optimize asset management and configuration processes. ABACUS can be used to catalog and manage any range of IT assets. The tool is highly configurable in terms of the types of elements (or components ) which can be modeled. These include, but are not limited to: Servers Applications Network components Security devices All of these are typical examples of assets managed in ABACUS as part of an ITSM approach. If you would like to drill down into ABACUS capabilities in this area please contact us. P a g e 4

5 Model any type of asset, containing any set attributes (ABACUS Catalogs for Asset and Configuration Management) Catalogs in ABACUS, as illustrated in the previous figure, present the information stored in the ABACUS repository in a tabular format which makes it ideal for managing the data, as well as round-tripping with other sources such as Microsoft Excel, SharePoint and Google Sheets. Through these catalogs you can maintain all of the information around the assets, including: adding and removing assets, updating attributes on the assets, and adding and removing relationships from the assets to other components in your repository (such as the relationship between an application and the server on which it runs. The ITSM Service Strategy and Design Process You can leverage the same concept of Catologs in ABACUS to full advantage when managing your service catalogs. The services can be explicitly designed in the tool, and managed in the same way as the other assets discussed in the previous section. In addition to the tabular management and design of services, ABACUS advanced diagramming techniques and explicit modeling of services as entities in their own right (in accordance with various standard frameworks including ArchiMate from the Open Group) allows for detailed strategic design of an optimal set of your organization s services. P a g e 5

6 ITSM Financial Management and TCO The financial management process is another key ITSM activity. The ability to control the cost of ownership across a range of IT assets is critical to the success of your IT organization. ABACUS ships with an in-built Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator. This TCO engine can be used to calculate the cost of ownership across all areas of your organization. These costs can be calculated and reported against different areas of your IT: network, infrastructure, applications, services etc. ABACUS enables you to calculate costs across your organization and then report on these from many different perspectives, or slices. For instance, you can report on cost per service, or even cost per organizational goal. (Bar charts showing application costs firstly by supplier and secondly by organization unit) Representing the results of these cost calculations with clear, compelling visuals is also a key step for expert practitioners. ABACUS supports a wide range of charts and visualizations including bar charts, pie charts, line charts, treemaps, sunburst diagrams and partition maps. For more information on visualizing data, please see the ABACUS whitepaper titled Enterprise Architecture Charts and Diagrams in ABACUS. P a g e 6

7 Finally, being able to calculate costs across your organization is important, but being able to accurately predict the effect on costs of the future changes is truly empowering. ABACUS enables both. ABACUS users can produce detailed future-state scenarios which can then be analyzed with the TCO engine to produce cost breakdowns for potential future-states of your IT organization. The ITSM Service Continuity and Availability Process ITSM Service Continuity and Availability processes are central to keeping the lights on. What happens if this data center goes down? Who will complain if that application fails? These critical questions can be answered quickly, and accurately by accessing and analyzing a single end-to-end structural model of the organization in ABACUS. (Traceability of ITSM Service Continuity and Availability ) The previous figure depicts an ABACUS dashboard summarizing information relating to an organization s IT estate. It provides a breakdown of operating systems across your IT assets, and lifecycle information relating to your physical server assets. It provides a quick overview of the road ahead allowing you to identify when the infrastructure on which your current services are based will reach end-of-life. P a g e 7

8 Secondly, we can see quickly and easily the traceability used to answer some of the questions posed above. We can see clearly which services will be taken out of action if the data centre goes down, or if a particular application fails. This unique traceability is due to the connected nature of the ABACUS repository. Answer your critical questions with ABACUS: What happens if this data center goes down? Who will complain if that application fails? Other ITSM Processes This whitepaper has highlighted a few key ITSM processes that ABACUS can support, but it is certainly not a complete or list. If you re interested to find out how ABACUS can be used to support your other ITSM activities, contact us. We also encourage you to download a free trial of ABACUS from and road-test the ITSM features yourself. Quick time-to-value for ITSM professionals ABACUS is a comprehensive modeling tool that can be used to effectively and expertly manage your organization from an ITSM perspective. ABACUS gives ITSM practitioners the ability to: > > > > Model the compliance of their organizations with their chosen ITSM approach Report on areas of non-compliance Track the compliance over time as more and more ITSM processes are adopted Support any number of key ITSM processes, such as > Asset and Configuration Management > Service Strategy and Design > Financial Management > Service continuity and availability P a g e 8

9 If you would to try ABACUS for yourself, please sign up for a free 30-day trial by visiting If you would like a demonstration from one of our expert consultants, demo@avolutionsoftware.com Or contact one of our offices to discuss ABACUS or for pricing. P a g e 9

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