Journal of System and Management Sciences
Vol.1 No.1, Feb. 2011
A Service Management Enterprise Architecture Jianwen Chen, Iain Mcintosh, George Africa, Arthur Sitaramayya IBM Australia, 601 Pacific Highway, St. Leonards, NSW 2065, Australia
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected]
Abstract In this paper, we propose a four-layer enterprise architecture for service management. The aim of the proposed architecture is to provide an automated, centralized, real-time service management system solution at the enterprise level. This architecture covers essential service management functions and integration between these functions.
The proposed architecture can be adopted as
service management reference architecture to implement service management in the real business world. Keywords: Enterprise Architecture, Service Management, System Management, Toolset Management.
1. Introduction IT Service Management represents an evolution from managing IT as a technology to managing IT as a business. Service management is a key enabler to provide an end-to-end view from business driven perspective. Today, there are some service management products provided by service vendors include: IBM Service Management, Remedy Service Management, USD Service Management, Novell ZENworks, Oracle Enterprise Manager, CA Unicenter, HP OpenView, and Microsoft Systems Management Server. There are different limitations and disadvantages for these service management products and systems. Most important, what is lacking for service management is an architecture to bring service management, system management, toolset management, and integration services together at the enterprise level. We propose a four-layer enterprise architecture
for service management. The advantages of
this service management architecture include: 1) It provides a service oriented architectural approach for service delivery; 2) It complies with ITIL V3 process framework; 3) It integrates with service management, system management and toolset management; 4) It provides an architecture for automated, centralised, real-time service management of the following service management functions: request fulfilment management, incident management, problem management, change management, asset management, service level/availability management, service catalogue management, configuration management, release management, event management, security management, and performance management; 5) It proposes a service management portal solution to provide a real time and proactive service management dashboard with an integrated view from the business, IT management and IT operation perspective; 6) It provides a report management solution 15
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Vol.1 No.1, Feb. 2011
across all service management functions/disciplines with a single reporting layer.
2.
A Service Management Enterprise Architecture
2.1 An Architecture Overview The overview of proposed four-layer architecture is presented in Figure 1 below:
Layer 1: The system management layer of client environment consists of various service management ITIL functions and collects data from operational domains using system management tool agents or agent less methods. The essential service management functions in this layer are:
Configuration management
Release and deployment management
Event management
Security compliance management
Performance and capacity management
Layer 2: System management and data integration layer: The collection systems within the client environment integrate to the service management functions by utilising an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) as transport and the underlying integration interfaces. Layer 3: The IT service management layer provides the management for the data collected from the client environment. The essential ITIL service management functions in this layer are:
Request fulfillment management
Incident management
Problem management
Change management 16
Journal of System and Management Sciences
Asset management
Service level/availability management
Service catalogue management
Vol.1 No.1, Feb. 2011
Layer 4: Service management portal and the presentation layer: Service management staff can access the service management layer via a single service management portal and a presentation layer common to all service management tools. 2.2 Integration Services in Service Management Architecture The proposed service management functions and service integrations in service management architecture are presented in Figure 2 below:
In our service management enterprise architecture, we adopt IBM service management system (ISM) to provide essential IT service management functions of proposed automatic, centralised and real-time service management system: ISM has automatic bridges between request, incident, problem and change (RIPC) records. ISM has integrated RIPC, request fulfillment, SLA/availability, asset, service catalogue management functions in one system. ISM is a centralized service management system with no additional client service management system required. ISM integrates service management functions with system management functions: event management, configuration management, release management, security management, and performance/capacity management. The inputs from event management, configuration management, security compliance management, performance & capacity management are automatically sent to ISM service 17
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Vol.1 No.1, Feb. 2011
management. The outputs from ISM service management are automatically sent to release management. In our service management enterprise architecture, we propose a real time and automatic event management with a central point for event collecting, aggregation and correlation, event enrichment and auto ticketing functions; a centralized and automated configuration management; an integration service between event management and configuration management for event enrichment; a centralized, process driven, automated asset
management ; an automated release management; an
automated, real-time, historical and proactive performance management; an automated and centralized security management for security compliance; report management that can provide the completed report across all service management functions, single presentation layer for reporting; a service management dashboard for real time, proactive service management with an integrated view from business perspective, IT management and IT operation. Event Management In most existing service management system, there are following major issues for event management:
No central point for event collecting, aggregation and correlation
No real time event management
No automated event ticket system
No event history repository
We propose an event management architecture that can address the issues above and have more features and benefits. Our event management architecture is presented below:
We propose a real time, automated event management system solution with following features and advantages: 18
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Vol.1 No.1, Feb. 2011
Event capture tools are all directed into IBM Omnibus to provide rules based centralized event collection, correlation and aggregation.
An auto ticking event management and event enrichment with business context through Impact which integrates configuration management data with service management.
An event management solution with an historical repository provided by Tivoli Data Warehouse (TDW).
A single reporting/presentation layer for event management provided by GSMRT.
Event monitoring across all operational domains through ITM6-ITCAM-Omegamon monitoring family and other integrated alerting toolsets.
Asset and Configuration Management There are the following major issues in most existing service management system for asset and configuration management:
No centralized and automatic asset and configuration management
No data integration and reconciliation between configuration management and asset management.
No integration between reporting for asset and configuration management.
We propose an asset and configuration management architecture that can address the issues above by automating the discovery, collection and aggregation and integration of configuration data to assist client in achieving and maintaining a baseline of assets and related configurations. It is presented in Figure 4 below:
Our asset and configuration management architecture proposes a solution with following features and advantages: It provides a centralized and automated configuration management. TADDM is adopted for 19
Journal of System and Management Sciences
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configuration item (CI) collection, application relationships and population into a configuration database. Another set of tools TAD4D and TAD4Z are adopted for scanning and discovery of hardware and software data across operational domains. It provides a centralized, process driven, automated asset management. TAMIT is adopted for asset management and integration with the ISM system. It utilizes and integrates the data from the configuration management database and the ISM database. It provides data integration and reconciliation between configuration and asset management. Configuration management is integrated with asset management through TAMIT and ITIC. TAMIT manages the relationship between asset and CIs and ITIC performs database integration mapping from configuration database to asset database. It provides asset and configuration management integration reporting through IBM GSMRT reporting system. Release Management In most existing service management system, there is no automatic release management across operational layers, manual intervention is normally required. Our proposed release management architecture includes automated provisioning of system OS, hardware, software, storage, applications and middleware across platforms and operational layers, for both physical and virtual environments. It is presented in Figure 5 below:
Our proposed release management architecture has following features and advantages: It provides automated release management integrated with the ISM system. It provides the automated provisioning of system OS, hardware, software, storage, application and middleware across platforms and layers, and for both physical and virtual environment. It is achieved through a set of provisioning tools integrated with ISM system to provide workflow based approvals and notifications as shown in figure above. 20
Journal of System and Management Sciences
Vol.1 No.1, Feb. 2011
It provides full reporting for release management through GSMRT. Performance and Capacity Management In most existing service management system, there are following major issues for performance and capacity management:
No real-time performance and capacity management
No proactive performance and capacity management
No centralized historical repository for performance and capacity management data
Our proposed performance and capacity management architecture addresses the issues above and provides more features and advantages as presented in Figure 6 below:
Our proposed performance and capacity management architecture meets the following objectives:
It provides the coverage for performance and capacity data collection across the layers.
It provides a system that is automated, both real-time/historical and proactive.
It provides a centralized repository for real-time and historical performance analysis.
It provides reporting that is both real-time and historical.
It provides an enterprise service management portal for performance and capacity analysis and reporting.
The
cornerstone
products
for
performance
and
capacity
management
are
IBM
ITM6-ITCAM-Omegamon family products for midrange and mainframe. The Tivoli Data Warehouse is used as the central data repository, TPA for analysis and proactive management, and GSMRT as the reporting solution.
Tivoli Integrated Portal is adopted to provide service 21
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management portal view for client and support staff. Security Management In most existing service management system, there are following major issues for security management:
There is no central repository for security data.
There is no automated provisioning of security patch management.
There is no automated integration with service management system.
There is no single layer reporting for security compliance.
Our proposed security management architecture addresses the issues above and provides more features and advantages:
We propose security management architecture to provide an automated and centralized security management architecture with following features and advantages: An automated, consistent and repeatable toolset and process for undertaking security compliance checks on devices. A data warehouse as the central repository for security data An automated provisioning of security patch management through TPM. A single layer compliance reporting through GSMRT The automated alert integration with ISM service management through OMNIBUS and Impact. Reporting and Dashboard In most existing service management system, there is no single layer reporting across all service 22
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Vol.1 No.1, Feb. 2011
management functions and disciplines to produce real-time/historical reporting. There are following major issues in most existing service management system:
No real time and proactive service view for SLA management
No business perspective view of service management
No integration view and single presentation layer from business, IT management and IT operation for service management.
Our proposed security management architecture can address issues above and offer more features and advantages:
Our service management reporting architecture provides a single, integrated reporting solution that enables reporting across all service management functions/disciplines and produces real-time/historical reports: IBM GSMRT is adopted to provide the completed report from ISM system, event management, security compliance management, configuration management, performance and capacity management. GSMRT is adopted to provide a single presentation layer for all reports across service management functions. Tivoli Data Warehouse can supply historical data to be extracted by GSMRT for historical reporting. Our service management dashboard architecture provides a real time, proactive service management with an integrated view from the business perspective, IT management and IT operations. The service management portal integrates the following products to produce the dashboard views: PriSM and TBSM are adopted for service management dashboard to provide real time and 23
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proactive service management especially SLA management. TBSM provides a business perspective of service management. PriSM integrates with TBSM, TDW, Impact to provide an integrated and graphical view from business user, IT Management, and IT operations perspectives.
3.
Conclusions In this paper, we propose a four-layer enterprise architecture for service management. This
architecture provides an automated, centralized, real-time service management system at the enterprise level. The proposed service management system 1) provides the following service management functions: request fulfillment
management, incident management, problem
management, change management, asset management, service level/availability management, service catalogue management, business continuity management; 2) integrates service management, system management and toolset management automatically. The integrated system management include: configuration management, release and deployment management, event management, security compliance management, and performance/capacity management; 3) proposes a service management dashboard and reporting solution to provide a real time and proactive service management and report management all service management functions and disciplines; 4) complies with ITIL V3 process framework; 5) provides a service oriented architectural approach for service delivery. The proposed architecture can be adopted as a service management reference architecture to guide the development of a technology roadmap for the implementation of service management in real business world.
References Maheswaran Surendra, 2010. IT Service Management and Delivery for an Enterprise. In CNSM 2010, 6th International Conference on Network and Service Management. Alberto Leon ‐ Garcia, Designing the Future Network, In CNSM 2010, 6th International Conference on Network and Service Management. Troy Gundersen, 2010. Modeling Services Linked To Business Value. In 14th Annual International IT Service Management Conference. Rob England, 2010. Making ITSM Real. In 14th Annual International IT Service Management Conference. Garrison Hall, 2010. Leveraging A Service CI Model As A Strategy For Service Improvement. In 14th Annual International IT Service Management Conference. Patrick Bolger, 2010. ITIL State of the Nation: The Reality of ITIL. In ITSM Fusion 10. Deborah L Anthony, 2010. Frameworks, Methodologies and Standards: Determining the Right Mix of Each for ITSM Success. In ITSM Fusion 10.
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