ITES – Services, Process, Framework!

‘Information Technology’ has gradually transitioned from a backend, supporting the business to an integral component for delivering business services. This has sent a wake up call to many IT service organizations-big and small for the need to reorganize and reinvent them to meet the emerging challenges. However, the act of restructuring and re-organizing does not by itself guarantee a successful re-invention as an ‘IT service organization’ is capable of providing ongoing quality services. In addition, the IT service organizations are hard pressed to address cost justification issues, resource and productivity issues, particularly since IT is the number two budget item for most businesses. Hence, without a well planned IT process, which includes quantifiable service quality indicators, organizations will fail to provide the ongoing service levels and performance needed to allow the organization to succeed in the new economy.

The other side of the story: The need for a well planned IT process in the organizations has led to the emergence of ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library). ITIL was developed in the 1980s with the goal to bring about an approach that would be vendor independent and applicable to organizations with differing technical and business needs. It is an approach to IT Services Management that is based on industry best practices. ITIL defines the objectives & activities, the input and output of each process in an IT service organization, which serves the concept of collecting, documenting, and maintaining all service management best practices together within one body of knowledge. ITIL provides a framework for ITSM that describes the general structure for organizing service management without specifying every action to be performed on a daily basis. This allows ITIL to be used within service organizations of differing sizes and IT goals. ITIL does not necessarily imply re-engineering an IT service organization. Rather, it provides a structure within the ITIL framework in which to place existing methods and activities. The emphasis is on an approach and the framework for planning the most common processes that has been proven in practice.

Many IT service organizations or individuals within an IT service organization spend most of their time focusing on the technology rather than the business needs that the technology is attempting to solve. The risks of this approach are that ‘IT service organizations’ implement the wrong technology and spend excessive resources “putting out fire.” The ITIL process encourages an atmosphere where the IT service organization implicitly understands the tactical and strategic objectives of the company. They can then make recommendations about appropriate technology to further the corporate objective, which effectively prevents fire rather than extinguishes them. In addition to ensuring that the right tools are employed within the company, this also brings the IT service organization in line with overall corporate objectives.

Written by: Sumit Biswas