Business white paper. Automate IT change. Intact Technology and HP change management framework

Transcription

1 Business white paper Automate IT change Intact Technology and HP change management framework

2 Table of contents 3 Executive summary 3 Mastering IT change 4 How Intact Technology implements the change process 5 Step 1: Change management 6 Step 2: Change control 6 Step 3: Change automation 7 The sequential step approach to achieve change automation 8 How Intact Technology services work with HP s 8 HP Service Manager (Step 1) 8 HP Universal Configuration Management Database (Steps 1 and 2) 9 HP Universal Discovery (Steps 1 and 2) 9 HP Release Control (Step 2) 9 HP Operations Orchestration (Steps 2 and 3) 10 HP Business Service Automation (Step 3) 10 HP Business Availability Center (Step 3) 10 Visible Impact Solution for Remedy: an ideal solution for BMC Remedy deployments 11 HP and Intact Technology change management in action 11 Conclusion 12 About Intact Technology 12 About HP

3 Executive summary If businesses are to innovate, compete successfully, and achieve better business outcomes, their IT organizations need to manage change as effectively as possible. Successful enterprises increasingly recognize the need to implement basic change management policies based on Information Technology Information Library (ITIL) best practices, and many businesses already have deployed at least some ITIL-based change management policies. ITIL is a general IT framework and, as such, sets forth only the basic structure for addressing complex change management challenges. Without supplementing ITIL best practices with consistent processes, governance, configuration management, and centralized reporting to track changes, even an ITIL-driven IT organization can end up in change chaos. One way to avoid the chaos that can come with change is to build toward maturity and greater control over it. The key is to automate change processes. According to the 2013 IT Operations OQ Report 1, more than half of the 300 IT operations executives surveyed said that one of their greatest challenges comes from managing changes in their environments. Also, 240 executives (80 percent) said that they can t automatically validate the accuracy of their deployments. Intact Technology, an IT and business service management consulting firm, fills a crucial gap in the change management marketplace by helping organizations move from change management to change control to change automation. The steps that help IT organizations move progressively through these stages of maturity make up the tested and proven Intact Technology Change Management Framework a sequential set of best practices that helps organizations take the risk out of change. The framework, coupled with the deployment of HP change management software, helps turn change chaos into change efficiency and allows organizations to achieve maturity in their technology environments more quickly. This white paper will outline the processes and tools your organization needs to address the challenge of change chaos and evolve beyond ITIL-based change management to change automation. It will demonstrate how even the most unwieldy and internally resistant IT organizations can be helped by embracing s from HP and Intact Technology. Finally, it will illustrate, through real-world examples, how organizations that implement the Intact Technology Change Management Framework and HP change management applications can achieve the benefits of reduced risk, lower cost, decreased complexity, greater availability, and a strong return on investment (ROI). Mastering IT change Most large companies have processes that simplify the continually increasing volume of change, but those processes are often manual, time-consuming, and fraught with human error. By adhering to change management principles that align with proven, standardized methodologies, such as ITIL best practices, organizations will be in better position to manage change. ITIL v3 change management definitions dictate that changes are to be recorded and then evaluated, authorized, prioritized, planned, tested, implemented, documented, and reviewed in a controlled manner. When changes are implemented in this fashion, they can be analyzed for risk, dependencies, business impact, schedule conflicts, in-flight issues, and other characteristics. With greater visibility into these issues, technology staff members are better able to follow a predetermined, prescribed path to execute change. The result is reduced risk, lower cost, and fewer negative effects on the business services that IT delivers. In general, ITIL best practices are broader than they are deep. It is up to each IT organization to apply ITIL guidelines in its own unique environment, turn chaos into order by focusing hard on the most minute details, and then turn order into a smoothly functioning, automated process. If organizations accomplish this, they can dramatically and consistently improve the results of IT change because they reduce and even eliminate human involvement in routine yet resourceintensive change events IT Operations OQ Report: Improving your Operations Quotient (OQ), Evolven 3

4 Change automation is particularly useful for helping IT teams avoid being overwhelmed by large volumes of IT change. It helps IT departments plan more effectively and avoid resource bottlenecks. Automated change is more scalable because it allows requests for IT changes to be processed more efficiently. Moreover, it enables the changes themselves to be implemented more quickly by fewer staff members. Step 3 Change automation Return on investment Change chaos Step 1 Change management Focus: Process and implementation ROI factor: Avoid unnecessary cost Step 2 Change control Focus: Making decisions around change; identifying high and low risk ROI factor: Lock down environment; reduce change failure Focus: Enabling resources for advanced IT focus, automating low-risk changes, and maintaining process consistency ROI factor: Free up resources and reduce resource requirements Intact Technology Change Management Framework ITIL best practices for change management Figure 1. Key milestones of the Intact Technology Change Management Framework How Intact Technology implements the change process Achieving automated change requires embarking on a carefully considered and systematic path whose course depends upon an organization s current maturity level. A migration from ITIL best practices which focus on basic change management policies and processes to change automation is not a seamless undertaking because of the significant human element associated with this progression. This means that the organization s leadership must enlist enterprise-wide advocacy when embarking on the change maturation path that Intact Technology recommends. Intact developed this framework to focus on helping organizations set and implement the change process, make better business decisions, and reduce costs and resources. Intact has become a leader in the marketplace by providing a that helps the overall business function. The Intact Technology Change Management Framework maps three distinct steps or levels on the way to automated change management: 1. Change management 2. Change control 3. Change automation Intact recommends that businesses transition systematically from one step to the next, rather than attempting a big bang style of implementation that could potentially disrupt the organization s overall business processes. Intact also recommends implementing and deploying the following HP s at specific phases: HP Service Manager HP Universal Configuration Management Database (UCMDB) 4

5 HP Universal Discovery (UD) HP Release Control HP Operations Orchestration HP Business Service Automation (BSA) HP Business Availability Center (BAC) Table 1. Intact Technology s change management milestones Step Name Change management Change control Change automation Process defined Service desk RFC process CAB formed Impact and risk analysis CI collision information Change intelligence Change reconciliation Service context change analysis and impact Change automation Change remediation Legend = Partial deployment = Maturing deployment Table 1 shows where key milestones appear during each of the three steps of change management maturation. Step 1: Change management The majority of IT organizations today are on step 1, change management. At this level, organizations have formed a change advisory board (CAB), and are already initiating and managing request for change (RFC) processes through their service desks. The CAB reviews and approves these change requests, and IT then implements them. Organizations at the beginning of step 1 frequently experience failure during change. In fact, it is not uncommon to see a 60 percent or higher change failure rate during this phase. Implementing step 1 processes does not guarantee a corresponding improvement in the change failure rate, especially if the CAB does not have comprehensive, up-to-date information to make more accurate decisions that avoid, for example, configuration item (CI) collisions. Change control tries to reduce the change failure rate by leveraging information from the configuration management database as the basis for the CAB to make appropriate decisions. Most organizations notice shortly after organizing a CAB that vital information, such as impact and risk analysis, is not readily available in order to make a decision regarding the RFC. Most of the time, these organizations rely on tribal knowledge of the CAB constituents and they are often wrong. Other critical elements include CI collision information, approval processes, collaboration, and general RFC workflow management. This is when organizations take the next step to change control, where IT departments focus on making better decisions around change. HP offers a systematic and disciplined four-step approach to getting started with integration and automation requirements to bring the service desk and operations together from a change management perspective. These four steps are: Standardize It is important to develop a consistent or standard approach to managing change across all relevant stakeholders. Consolidate This includes both service desk and CAB functionality and may require creating tiered CABs for supporting less global decision-making in larger enterprises. 5

6 Understand your environment This requires taking a hard look at existing infrastructure and software, as well as organizational and process requirements. Use automation to extend the boundaries of change With these steps under your belt, you will be much more prepared for automation. For more information on implementing the process of change management, review the paper, Change Management Best Practices, located at reducechangerisk.com. Step 2: Change control Step 2, change control, focuses on making better decisions based on the information you have, and on identifying the nature and degree of the risk in your environment. This step focuses on the ability to control, predict, and proactively manage change through the digitization of the change management process. The goal is to eliminate unforeseen issues such as added cost. Change control enables the CAB to make better decisions that avoid change collisions and provides a way to identify the root cause of a failed change by isolating changes to a specific CI at a specific time. To achieve this type of predictability, the system must be configured to gain greater understanding of the organization s business service. A discovery tool that maps the business services within the CMDB can accomplish the desired predictability. The maps should be configured to provide impact analysis information, which will be used to assess risk. Once an organization creates service maps and impact analyses for all of its business services, the CAB will then be in a position to: Make objective decisions on all proposed changes Objectively predict the impact of a change before it is initiated Assign statistical risk to a change based on empirical information Understand CI dependencies sufficiently in order to be sure of consulting the proper teams for RFC approval Identify potential change collisions Identify prior change issues Optimize RFC change windows to significantly minimize risk Step 3: Change automation At step 3, change automation, most changes are automatically documented, audited, controlled, timed and less costly. Service levels improve because it is easier to identify, address, and remediate service degradations that affect business continuity during IT change. The appropriate software solutions can help organizations attain step 3 by eliminating many human touch points, such as manually documenting infrastructure changes and updating numerous ad hoc systems. As an example, run-book automation provides a way to automate routine, error-prone tasks. It can reduce the time it takes to implement labor-intensive tasks from days to minutes. In simple terms, run-book automation can automate virtualization management, performance monitoring, infrastructure and application changes, trouble ticketing, and other IT activities across application and platform silos. A run-book process may encompass multiple management disciplines and interact with all types of hardware and software. By spanning so many diverse systems and interacting with many types of infrastructure elements, run-book automation can precisely control how and when a change will occur. To further leverage the power of automation, such tasks as provisioning virtual machines, software releases, patch management, and service rollouts can be automated with server, network, and storage automation tools. Table 2 details the various types of automation and the effective time-savings associated with each of them. 6

7 Table 2. Potential savings stemming from change automation Change to automate Average person-hours needed After automation Potential savings Change/update passwords 30 hours 15 minutes > 95% Change/update community strings 30 hours 15 minutes > 95% Patch operating systems 85 hours 90 minutes > 95% Make network-wide policy changes 50 hours 150 minutes > 90% Create new VLANs 50 hours 150 minutes > 90% Roll out new network services 30 hours 15 minutes > 95% Inventory software, hardware, and configurations 100 hours 150 minutes > 95% Audit devices against security policy 100 hours 10 minutes > 95% Remediate devices that are not compliant 30 hours 60 minutes > 95% Remove host definition 30 hours 15 minutes > 95% Update ACLs 50 hours 150 minutes > 90% Enable/disable port interfaces 30 hours 15 minutes > 95% Note: This chart shows actual implementation times; planning time is not included. HP Business Availability Center Business service monitoring HP Universal Discovery Problem isolation for change automation HP Universal Configuration Management Database for change management and control BSA Network automation Server automation Storage Essentials for change automation and control HP Operations Orchestration for Change Automation HP Service Manager HP Release Control for Change Control Operations orchestration Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Advanced Figure 2. Stepped approach to implementing change automation using HP change management software The sequential step approach to achieve change automation Implementing change control and change automation can deliver compelling benefits, but organizations should deploy s in steps for best results. In many cases, implementing the recommended s with one group inside an organization is an effective first step that can provide rapid cost-savings and efficiencies. Intact Technology works with its clients to identify which opportunities and businesses in an organization will demonstrate the most significant results in the least amount of time. Intact helps businesses prioritize their goals, choose the right solutions, and establish a multi-step project schedule. 7

8 How Intact Technology services work with HP s Intact Technology recommends that organizations deploy the comprehensive, integrated suite of HP change management software tools as they move through steps 1, 2, and 3. All these HP solutions work together seamlessly, using either a single CMDB or, more commonly, a federated system whose capabilities are easy to install, expand, and connect to other systems. In addition, change management software from HP has been proven in real-world environments to control and automate the key administration, reporting, and monitoring processes associated with effective change management. HP Software is integrated at every step, providing incremental solutions to help any organization mature on its way to change automation. Figure 2 illustrates how the HP s work together to make implementing IT changes faster and more cost-effective. HP Service Manager (step 1) HP Service Manager is a comprehensive and fully integrated IT service desk suite that helps IT departments decrease the time it takes to deploy changes and resolve the resulting service problems. Designed around ITIL-based best practices and built with a highly scalable serviceoriented architecture, HP Service Manager integrates change management with other key IT processes, such as incident, problem, and release management. HP Service Manager can be deployed as the starting point of the change management process, in which RFCs are created and managed through a workflow. Each step that needs to be completed or authorized should be processed through this type of tool. With HP Service Manager, change managers can: Use template, cloning, or EZ Forms to create RFCs HP Service Manager provides multiple paths for creating RFCs. All fields can be available in the templates or clones, and will automatically populate in the newly created RFC. Using templates and cloning will minimize the necessity of manual data entry. Automate workflow movement and create phase triggers With HP Service Manager, an RFC moves automatically through the process when all criteria are satisfied. This effectively reduces the number of manual touches. Be automatically notified of changes in the workflow HP Service Manager automatically calculates and sends notifications. This provides everyone involved in the change management process with more time to focus on other items, rather than manually generating and sending . Create rules to enable an automatic workflow When specific criteria are met, HP Service Manager will automatically handle deferrals, cancellations, unauthorized change identification, closure, removal of unused records, and removal of terminated users based on business rules. This eliminates the need for manual housekeeping. Create reminders, , and escalations HP Service Manager saves staff time by distributing systematic reminders containing links back to the system. Organizations can implement HP Service Manager during change management, step 1, and continue to mature their deployment throughout the entire process. HP Universal Configuration Management Database (steps 1 and 2) The UCMDB is a data repository for storing CIs, CI properties, and the relationships among CIs. HP Universal Directory (UD) software automatically populates and maintains the UCMDB, then creates models representing the complex relationships between CIs and the business services they support. The UCMDB integrates seamlessly with other HP software solutions as well as many third-party solutions to provide them with CI and service context information. This way, every solution shares the same view of the CIs that make up the technology environment, as well as the same view of how these CIs work together to deliver business services to the enterprise. 8 Because valuable data resides in multiple repositories throughout the IT environment, the UCMDB provides federation and reconciliation capabilities that enable businesses to leverage existing data throughout the environment. These capabilities allow users to search for and use data without needing to understand where that data resides or the technology that is used to access it. Expanding the breadth of data sources through federation with the UCMDB enhances an organization s understanding of change impact and provides greater CI depth during the change management process.

9 During change management, step 1, organizations can use the information stored in the UCMDB as the repository of CIs for their service desk solution. During change control, step 2, service maps with impact analysis information are added to the UCMDB and used for the change control process. Table 3. How HP software products can help businesses move from change chaos to change automation Step Name Change management Change control Change automation HP Service Manager HP Universal Configuration Management Database HP Universal Discovery HP Release Control HP Operations Orchestration HP Business Service Automation HP Business Availability Center Legend = Step during which each HP software product is likely to be implemented HP Universal Discovery (steps 1 and 2) UD solves one of the most critical challenges associated with deploying a best practices-based : how to maintain an accurate CMDB. While UD facilitates the discovery aspect, UD with UCMDB provides the ability to discover and develop an appropriate model of the business services or applications. UD populates the UCMDB by facilitating the comprehensive discovery and mapping of the relationships of an organization s infrastructure including applications, databases, servers, storage, virtual environments, mainframes, and network elements. Accomplishing this task can dramatically reduce the lead time required to establish an effective change control and change automation solution. The depth at which UD discovers information will determine the level it will support. Rudimentary CI discovery will support step 1, while in-depth business service mappings will support step 2. HP Release Control (step 2) HP Release Control (formerly HP Change Control Management) automatically aggregates, analyzes, and normalizes RFCs that are submitted to HP Service Manager or other change management systems. This solution automatically and continually performs impact analysis on requested changes by combining data in a shared context among the RFC, CIs, and the impact analysis calculated within the UCMDB. Beyond helping the CAB proactively manage and assess the impact of change, HP Release Control addresses a number of other requirements of a modern CAB that must function in a large enterprise with geographically distributed stakeholders who have limited time to meet in person. HP Release Control is the key component for the implementation of change control and stands as the centerpiece of the Intact Technology Change Management Framework. HP Operations Orchestration (steps 2 and 3) HP Operations Orchestration automates operational workflows during each phase of the change management lifecycle by providing a compliant audit trail throughout the process. Each workflow can easily be directed throughout the change management process to unify traditionally siloed IT systems and teams. HP Operations Orchestration currently supports more than 3,000 HP and non-hp elements that are used to automate underlying IT management processes. HP Operations Orchestration can be implemented during the change control phase to bridge the gap between applications and unify processes across all applications involved in the change control workflow. Once an organization is ready to integrate a full change automation solution, HP Operations Orchestration will be the key tool to tie the operational processes together. 9

10 Customer case study: Large U.S. communications company A large U.S. communications company needed to resolve the following issues: Changes were heavily impacting production environment Risks and impact of change were determined by tribal knowledge Long and cumbersome change advisory board (CAB) meetings Inability to detect the changes being implemented outside the change process Lack of data sources relating the infrastructure elements associated with changes to applications or business services BMC Remedy had provided solid workflow and change processes, but the current solution was not providing necessary details The solution: Intact Technology s Visible Impact for Remedy HP UCMDB with UD HP Release Control The results: Discovered and modeled key applications and business services by leveraging the HP UCMDB Populated the BMC Atrium instance to provide an accurate configuration item (CI) list for proposed changes with the out-of-the-box UCMDB integration adapter Analyzed BMC Remedy s request for change (RFC) against data in the UCMDB to provide accurate impact, collisions, and risk information on proposed changes via HP Release Control Used discovered UCMDB data and HP Release Control to detect latent changes being conducted in the environment without associated change requests Reduced the length of CAB meetings by 30 percent Reduced production impact of changes by as much as 30 percent Dramatically reduced latent changes in the environment Leveraged the service definitions in the UCMDB to enhance overall operations and monitoring HP Business Service Automation (step 3) BSA provides robust automation across servers, storage, networks, and clients. It also features best-in-class run-book automation with HP Operations Orchestration. BSA achieves significant operational efficiencies without a significant investment in headcount. It also helps companies reduce costs and risk through automation, and enables a closed-loop change execution process. HP Business Availability Center (step 3) BAC is a comprehensive business service and application monitoring and dashboard solution that helps change managers track the success of IT changes and their effect on the overall customer experience and system performance. With BAC, technology teams can monitor the health of business services and track service-level metrics on applications from the perspective of the customer experience. BAC allows technology and change managers to: View their entire environments from a single point, integrating internal IT systems and customer experience Proactively monitor real-time business processes, encompassing IT systems, volume metrics, and infrastructure key performance indicators (KPIs) Correlate data, enabling root-cause analysis and problem isolation Proactively identify availability and performance degradation as well as the composite infrastructure that supports those transactions Reduce mean time to resolution of outages and increase mean time between failures Provide better service to business units by improving the performance and availability of composite applications When used during the change automation phase, BAC provides performance and availability information that can be used to identify business continuity issues, proactively identify anomalies, and reactively provide alerts on business-service issues that have been caused by changes in the environment. In some cases, this monitoring can be used as a trigger to remediate change and, therefore, can significantly reduce the time taken to determine the root cause and resolve issues. Visible Impact Solution for Remedy: an ideal solution for BMC Remedy deployments Organizations that already use BMC Remedy and want greater visibility into their information can also take advantage of the Visible Impact Solution for Remedy. This solution offers capabilities similar to HP Service Manager and integrates within the Intact Technology Change Management Framework. It delivers accurate insight into the business impact of proposed changes, providing measurably better change management, reduced risk, and a stronger return on investment. Additionally, thanks to highly detailed analysis, many changes can be approved outside of CAB meetings, enabling you to focus on the most critical or high-risk changes. Visible Impact Solution for Remedy offers: Change visibility Through the combination of automated discovery, application modeling, and comprehensive change analysis, you will be armed to make context-aware decisions on changes. Change auditing You will have the ability to detect changes being performed outside normal processes. And you can receive alerts and reports on changes that were implemented without an associated approved change request. Understanding of potential effects You ll have a better understanding of the potential risk, impact, or collision of changes. 10

11 HP and Intact Technology change management in action Intact Technology has a long and successful history of helping enterprises of all sizes transform to a state of change automation. Even the most skeptical and institutionally resistant organizations have experienced the time- and cost-saving benefits of automating change by embracing the Intact Technology Change Management Framework, along with solutions from the HP change management portfolio. Please make sure to read about the highlights of two of those successes on the left-hand side of these pages. Customer case study: Public sector A large government agency needed to overcome these pain points: Cumbersome and ineffective change processes Multiple and disparate tools, processes, workflows, and approval standards across the organization Inability to determine impact/risk of changes The solutions: HP UCMDB with HP UD HP Service Manager HP Release Control The results: Merged seven change boards into one Aligned the organization with a common change process and workflow, and built change standards into the tool with HP Service Manager Reduced the time on CAB meetings by more than half Discovered and modeled key applications and business services using HP UCMDB with HP UD Leveraged the UCMDB data to provide accurate change analysis with HP Release Control Reduced production outages from changes by as much as 40 percent Conclusion Managing change for an IT organization can be fraught with risks and extra costs unless tested and proven change management methodologies and policies are in place. Although many companies already deploy at least some change management procedures based on ITIL best practices, these often aren t enough to counteract such critical business continuity issues as unplanned downtime caused by human error. ITIL best practices need to be supplemented with consistent processes, regimented governance policies, proven configuration management tools, and centralized reporting in order to achieve greater change control. The ultimate goal of successful organizations should be to automate their change processes so that changes, such as installing patches and provisioning new servers, require no manual implementation and are always consistent. Intact Technology is in the business of helping organizations achieve the desired state of change automation through a step-by-step process called the Intact Technology Change Management Framework. This tested and proven methodology takes the risk out of change and is designed to deliver: Lower systems management costs Simpler processes Better resource allocation Reduced downtime and related business-process disruptions Fewer costly manual mistakes Rather than provide a one size fits all solution, the Intact Technology Change Management Framework focuses on designing the best possible processes and software environment for each customer s unique business and IT needs. Supplemented by the broad and deep HP portfolio of change management software, the Intact framework can help organizations of any size reap the competitive benefits of a highly responsive and change-resilient technology environment, while they reduce risk, lower cost, decrease complexity, experience greater availability, and achieve a strong ROI. 11

12 About Intact Technology Intact Technology delivers complete, outcome-based solutions in short, successful cycles. The company implements transformational IT management solutions to help you operate IT faster, better, and cheaper, focusing your resources on what matters. Intact leads you to ensure your mission success through technology innovations that result in major operational improvements. As an organization, Intact specializes in HP Software integrations with third-party vendors, such as BMC, ServiceNow, and Troux, enabling customers to accelerate profitable growth and efficiency. About HP HP is a technology company that operates in more than 170 countries around the world. We explore how technology and services can help people and companies address their problems and challenges. We apply new thinking and ideas to create more simple, valuable, and trusted experiences with technology, continuously improving the way our customers live and work. No other company offers as complete a technology product portfolio as HP. We provide infrastructure and business offerings, from handheld devices to some of the world s most powerful supercomputer installations. We offer consumers a wide range of products and services, from digital photography to digital entertainment and from computing to home printing. This comprehensive portfolio helps us match the right products, services, and solutions to our customers specific needs. Learn more at hp.com/go/btosoftware intact-tech.com/visible-impact.htm Sign up for updates hp.com/go/getupdated Share with colleagues Rate this document Copyright 2009, 2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. 4AA2-6817ENA, January 2014, Rev. 1 This is an HP Indigo digital print.