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Brillio@Knowledge15:  What You Need to Know

If you already have an ITSM implementation and are looking to implement IT Automation, there are key ITSM components that need to be put into service. Come visit us at ServiceNow’s Knowledge15 conference. We’ll be waiting for you at our kiosk P22.

Actionable Service Catalog: A service catalog is an organized and curated collection of any and all business and information technology-related services that can be performed by, for, or within an enterprise. An actionable service catalog enables self-service and a user can request for the services on demand. To maximize the value of automation, it should be exposed to users as services and positioned in the enterprise service catalog. Care should be taken to make sure accessibility and security of the service is taken care by exposing the services to appropriate users or user groups.

• Service Asset and Configuration Management: One of the most critical integrations for automation with respect to ITSM is with the CMDB and AMDB. Having the CMDB up to date at all times is important and automation should take care of the same, and not just focus on the physical object. Integration also results in improved accuracy as the CI details and asset details that are used in the automation library are sourced from the CMDB which is the approved repository.

• IT Financial Management: IT as a business is no longer a buzzword. And having an integration between IT Automation and IT Financial Management enables service or portfolio owners to drive demand behavior and also provide monthly chargeback reports easily. A mature service cost model will be needed to appropriately determine the price of an automated value flow.

• Change and Release Management: One perspective is that ITIL is aligned with change management. Release management is limiting automation due to its emphasis on processes and procedures. However, change management is extremely important and automation should not bypass the same. Change tickets need to be opened from automation and from an audit or compliance perspective, each and every automation request that changes a state of a production CI needs to have an associated approved change ticket.

• Service Reporting and CSI: Automation is not a one-time initiative. It is best implemented in phases and performed incrementally to achieve the CSI spiral. ITSM tools and enterprise BI tools need to be integrated to provide the much needed service assurance dashboard to enable automation/service managers to keep track of automations and govern them successfully. Speed and agility are the essence of automation and automated service reporting is needed to ensure accuracy of fulfilled automation requests. The CSI program and the governance process should be extended to automation, to ensure scalability and sustainability of automation in enterprise IT.

Schedule a Meeting with Brillio at Knowledge15 at kiosk P22

Brillio@Knowledge15 — What You Need to Know

The most logical choice for the majority of CIOs is to take a holistic view of the IT infrastructure landscape and then, put a strategic plan in place to automate at every logical point. Sounds logical. Seems logical.

Yet, what prevents them from moving forward and taking action?

Usually, it is because there are just too many competing priorities and complexities that have developed over time, owing to new decisions or new management. But now, with the plethora of technologies available, coupled with the experience of how infrastructure should be managed and provisioned, we have an unprecedented opportunity to realize never before seen efficiencies, with Automation. Assuming that the ITSM platform is deployed both from a process and tools perspective, implementing IT automation is a phased journey.

Step one is dedicated to achieving Elemental Automation

What is Elemental Automation?

Elemental Automation is independent, nonetheless comprehensive automation for either Networks, Servers, or Storage, spanning all tasks from provisioning and change management to compliance enforcement and reporting.

Elemental Automation provides the building blocks to achieve IT Value Flow automation, and you should not stop at the incremental value achieved through Elemental automation. A mature and scalable IT automation platform is a core requirement. Technically, there are many tools available that meet the automation requirements. Yet, strategic planning is needed to ensure that focus in not only on the IT automation tool, but also on the overall approach.

Step two is dedicated to achieving IT Value Flow Automation

What is IT Value Flow Automation?

IT Value Flow automation is automating the entire value flow chain with continuous control of each phase of the service life cycle, across the data center and client end points, from automated operations to monitoring and ticketing. ITSM plays a big role in implementing Value flow automation. The typical issue organizations face is around the maturing of their existing automation capabilities. Or, building new ones that navigates the barriers of organizational structure and roles and responsibilities in existing technology silos.

ITSM, being able to deliver cross functional services, is a perfect way to help connect the dots across various business teams and IT groups and implement value flow automation that cuts across technologies and LOBs. ITSM also helps in associating value flows with one of more IT services in the service catalog.

The perfect analogy for this from a pure play ITSM world is implementing Service Catalog. The concept of service decomposition is a perfect example. Elemental automation can be linked to service components or technical services. IT Value Flow automation can be related to Business Services and Service Offerings.

A mature IT automation footprint is achieved by identifying and implementing the right IT value flows, having a stable and scalable automation platform governed by ITSM and having tight integrations with the key ITSM components.

Want to learn more about Brillio and IT Automation? Please meet us at Knowledge 15 in Las Vegas (April 19–24) at Kiosk P22. See you there!

Written by Prashanth Prabhakara, Director of Infrastructure Management Services and Cloud Infrastructure at Brillio

Every CIO is measured by his ability to meet the challenge of delivering value at reduced cost. A key approach to unlocking value is reducing spend on service provisioning and service operations.

ServiceNow’s ITSM platform is popular among infrastructure groups to optimize IT Service Management. The impact of the ITSM platform on cost take out can be greatly enhanced through IT Automation. However, IT Automation needs to be closely integrated with the ITSM framework, in order to yield maximum results.

You may wonder - does IT Automation fall under ITSM, or is ITSM a part of IT Automation? Most organizations, where IT Automation and ITSM are two different teams or groups, face challenges in meeting the CIOs’ goals. IT Automation, if integrated within the ITSM framework, provides the most effective way to govern and execute the initiatives needed to optimize, expand and innovate IT services.

Here’s an example of Brillio’s ITSM framework which integrates IT Automation.

A combination of a scalable, stable service management tool and well-designed ITIL aligned processes provides a solid foundation to implement and roll out IT Automation. Some of the key guiding principles while planning for IT automation within the ITSM framework are:

Self-Service: Self-service is about user empowerment. Enterprise IT is one of the laggards in this space. After years of tight control by IT, the pendulum is swinging the other way and rightfully so. Users love to have the control of what and when they will request for, without dealing with any human intermediaries. Self-service is one of the most effective way to increase customer satisfaction. There are 2 views to self-service and need to be carefully designed. 1) Request 2) Status. ITSM and specifically service catalog can be leveraged to build an enterprise wise self-service portal and upon this platform, Automation need to be implemented to automate zero-touch request fulfillment.

Services-based Automation: In a service oriented world, having an end user perspective is of utmost importance for a scalable and sustainable automation framework. The industry is moving from Elemental Automation, to Run Book Automation to Services and Value flow Automation. Having automation modelled as a service helps in a structured implementation approach and achieving a scalable design. Key parameters that need to be defined for any automation requirements are 1) Price 2) SLA 3) Description 4) Components 5) Availability 6) Exclusions. ITIL’s Service Design processes provide the right framework in designing services based automation.

Facilitate Continuous Improvement: In large organizations, IT Automation initiatives are seldom met with enthusiastic reaction. One of the approaches to circumvent this is to start small, show incremental value and then leverage the savings achieved through automation for the next set of initiatives. A strong and robust governance process is critical for a smooth adoption. Continuous improvement is effected through pro-active and reactive means and the process should be designed to handle the same. Process to ensure that the automation service manager has the right set of data to help analyze service performance and also ensure that user feedbacks are incorporated and updates are made to the automation service in the next iteration.

Technology agnosticism: Most automation tools are technology specific and over a period of time, this becomes a constraint on their impact. IT Automation has to be technology agnostic and needs to overcome changes to the underlying technology. End users need to be abstracted from the underlying technology and be flexible to adapt a variety of automation products. Automation Service Bus helps to orchestrate seamlessly between the Service catalog front end and underlying automation tools and technologies.

Integration with ITSM processes: Industry regulations demand auditability on IT environments. ITSM processes govern IT operations and ensure that organizations are compliant with defined standards. Key integrations with Change Management, Asset and Configuration Management, Financial Management, Incident Management, Request Fulfillment Process and Service Level Management ensure that automation implemented is future proof and this improves the maturity of organization’s IT service and Operations. A stable ITSM platform is essential to build these integrations and a flexible ITSM platform will accelerate and reduce the cost of successful IT automation implementations.

While many CIOs have made investments in ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow, they can unlock more value from their investment by integrating IT Automation with the ITSM platform.

Meet us at Knowledge15 in Las Vegas on April 19-24 to learn more about how this can be done. We’ll be exhibiting at the conference with Brillio representatives stationed at P22.